From Police Power to Police Practice

Abstract

Understanding the everyday manifestations of systemic racism, cisheteropatriarchy, and unequal justice for oppressed women and femmes necessitates meaningful engagement with critical law enforcement studies—the study of why and how policing and punishment takes place in carceral societies. Anne Gray Fischer’s The Streets Belong to Us spells out why sexual policing matters for the history of political development, capitalist growth, and socioeconomic inequality in U.S. cities, like Boston, Atlanta, and Los Angeles. Ultimately, as Fischer’s work affirms, urban law enforcement forces have routinely greased the wheels of punitive governance and state violence under the auspices of maintaining control over a contested and shifting social order.