The police response to protests erupting on America's streets in recent years has made the militarization of policing painfully transparent. Yet, properly demilitarizing the police requires a deeper understanding of its historical development, causes, and social logics. Policing Empires offers a postcolonial historical sociology of police militarization in Britain and the United States to aid that effort. Julian Go tracks when, why, and how British and US police departments have adopted military tactics, tools, and technologies for domestic use. Go reveals that police militarization has occurred since the very founding of modern policing in the nineteenth century into the present, and that it is an effect of the "imperial boomerang." Policing Empires thereby unlocks the dirty secret of police militarization: Police have brought imperial practices home to militarize themselves in response to perceived racialized threats from minority and immigrant populations.
Industry Reviews
"Meticulously researched, deftly argued, and beautifully written-Go unearths the transnational roots and imperial seeds of today's brutal police policies and culture. As we learn, the racist patrol practices, automatic weaponry, and armored vehicles that dominate the streets of Ferguson and London are not a deviation from policing's original ethos, but a perfection of counter-insurgency tactics hatched in colonial Manila and Madras. One of the best books on law enforcement in decades, Go has shifted the way we will think about policing, justice, and resistance for years to come."
Forrest Stuart, author of Down, Out, and Under Arrest
"Julian Go's Policing Empires is an indispensable work of historical sociology, tracing the waves of police militarization in the United States and Britain over time that have cumulatively rendered nearly meaningless the lines between what police do to some people at home and what imperial forces do to people abroad. We see here the very particular ways by which the tools of imperial subjugation and control (military weapons, but also imperial logics and technologies), as well as the racialization of both colonial subjects themselves and of supposed deviance and disorder in the colonies, come home to roost in an imperial boomerang, to be used against citizens in Britain and the U.S. - especially racialized citizens and moral/crime panics that are racialized. This is the most nuanced and important book I have yet read when it comes to understanding police militarization."
Simon Balto, author of Occupied Territory: Policing Black Chicago from Red Summer to Black Power
"In this meticulous and innovative study, Julian Go unearths the deep imperial roots of the militarization of policing in Britain and the United States. The thesis is bold and its implications far-reaching. It is sure to excite, surprise, and challenge students of the penal state, colonialism, urban marginality, and racial domination."
Loic Wacquant, author of The Invention of the "Underclass" and Bourdieu in the City
"This original and fascinating history of colonial policing, is a must-read for anyone concerned by racist state violence. Policing Empire combines detailed research with a compelling and urgent argument challenging militarised policing across the Anglophone world in the 21st century"
Adam Elliott-Cooper, author of Black Resistance to British Policing
"Turning his keen and critical eye toward police militarization, Julian Go reveals how the modes, means, and technologies of the police were forged in empire's cauldron. This brave and provocative genealogy shows how the disdain of a racialized other and the fear of their revolt brought the tactics of imperial conquest home. Ambitious in scope yet effortlessly readable, Policing Empires takes us from the advent of the civil police in London, where the threat of Irish rebellion and the revolt of black Caribbean slaves shaped the formation of the modern police force, to the counterinsurgent practices developed and honed in the Philippines and in Vietnam which would be deployed in Harlem and Watts, but also in Chicago, Detroit, Oakland, Ferguson and Minneapolis.
Reuben Jonathan Miller, Author of Halfway Home: Race, Punishment and the Afterlife of Mass Incar
" Policing Empires painstakingly reveals the colonial roots of modern policing across the globe. Dismissing simple narratives of police militarization or individualized racism, Go shows how racialized fear of crime and the mobilization of counterinsurgency practices have been the organizing logics of the institution of policing.
Alex S. Vitale, author of The End of Policing
Policing Empires painstakingly reveals the colonial roots of modern policing across the globe. Dismissing simple narratives of police militarization or individualized racism, Go shows how racialized fear of crime and the mobilization of counterinsurgency practices have been the organizing logics of the institution of policing. * Alex S. Vitale, author of The End of Policing *
Policing Empires is an important contribution to the rapidly growing field of police history. * Jonathon Booth, Criminal Law & Criminal Justice Books *
Go provides invaluable depth and specificity to a field that is most commonly surveyed from the vantage-point of grand strategy and macroeconomics. Reading this book as militarized American police forces are mobilized to crack down on students protesting the mass slaughter of Palestinians on university campuses further heightens its clear and immediate relevance. * Stuart Rollo, International Affairs *
