Challenges and Choices for Crime-Fighting Technology Federal Support of State and Local Law Enforcement

2001 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Law Enforcement ◽  
Federal Support ◽  
Local Law Enforcement ◽  
Local Law ◽  
State And Local

Study Methods

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dean A. Dabney ◽  
Richard Tewksbury
Keyword(s):  
Law Enforcement ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
Federal State ◽  
Street Crime ◽  
Local Law Enforcement ◽  
Two Cities ◽  
Local Law ◽  
State And Local ◽  
Depth Interviews ◽  
Homicide Investigation

Chapter 2 presents the methods of the current study. Three fieldwork projects in two cities are explained, including one researcher’s embeddedness with a plain-clothes, street crime unit, one researcher’s 10 month inclusion with a narcotics investigation unit, and one author’s 18 months of participant observation with a major city’s homicide investigation unit. Additionally, in-depth interviews with 15 federal, state and local law enforcement authorities were conducted. These three sources of data are integrated and triangulate the data used for the analysis.

scholarly journals Crime, Immigration, and Ad hoc Instrumentalism

2012 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 157-223 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Alan Sklansky
Keyword(s):  
Law Enforcement ◽  
Ad Hoc ◽  
Crime Control ◽  
Law Enforcement Officers ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Rule Of Law ◽  
Legal Rules ◽  
Local Law Enforcement ◽  
Local Law ◽  
State And Local

Criminal law and immigration law, once separate fields of governance in the United States, are rapidly growing less distinct. Immigration crimes now account for a majority of all federal prosecutions; deportation is widely seen as a key tool of crime control; immigration authorities run the nation’s largest prison system; and state and local law enforcement officers work hand-in-hand with federal immigration officials. This article traces these trends and assesses their significance. The rise of an intertwined regime of “crimmigration” law has generally been attributed to some combination of nativism, overcriminalization, and a cultural obsession with security, but it also exemplifies, and has helped to reinforce, a crucial and underappreciated development in U.S. legal culture—a rising tendency to treat legal rules and legal procedures as interchangeable tools, to be brought to bear pragmatically and instrumentally on an ad hoc basis. Ad hoc instrumentalism of this kind has genuine strengths, but it also raises significant concerns about the rule of law and political accountability. The accountability concerns, in particular, are exacerbated by two other features of our newly merged system of immigration enforcement and criminal justice: its bureaucratic opacity and its selective application.

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