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Policing & Surveillance

Policing

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The modern police culture has undoubtedly been shaped by a variety of historical, cultural, and economic influences. In order to truly understand interactions with law at the enforcement level, this culture needs to be investigated and understood. Surveillance is the monitoring of behavior and information. How the government and law enforcement agencies choose to practice surveillance greatly impacts ideas of privacy and autonomy.

Associated Researchers

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Derek Epp

 

Derek Epp is an assistant professor in the Department of Government. His research agenda focuses on policy change, asking why some policies persist - remaining the status quo for decades - while others undergo frequent adjustments. In particular, he is interested in measuring the capacity of institutions to attend to political information and then tracking the allocation of that attention across issues: what issues receive attention, for how long, and to what effect. He also study criminal justice, with a particular focus on racial patterns in police traffic stops.

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Jennifer E Laurin

 

Jennifer Laurin joined the faculty of the University of Texas School of Law in 2009. Professor Laurin studies and writes about how law and institutional design shape the functioning of criminal justice institutions.  Her scholarship has considered, the role of constitutional litigation in regulating police, the shared roles of courts, police, and lawyers in regulating forensic science, and oversight of indigent defense.  Professor Laurin is a co-author (with Michael Avery, David Rudovsky, and Karen Blum) of Police Misconduct: Law and Litigation, the leading treatise in that area of civil rights litigation.  

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Michael Sierra-Arévalo

 

Michael Sierra-Arévalo is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Texas at Austin. Sierra-Arévalo's research employs quantitative and qualitative methods to investigate police culture, behavior, and legitimacy. His first book, The Danger Imperative: Violence, Death, and the Soul of Policing, is forthcoming from Columbia University Press (Spring '24). Drawing on ethnographic field work and interviews with police officers in three U.S. police departments, The Danger Imperative shows how policing's cultural preoccupation with violence and death shapes police practice and social inequality. His other research interests include firearms and violence prevention. Sierra-Arévalo's research has appeared in a variety of social science publications, including the Proceedings of the National Academy of SciencesCriminologyLaw & Society Reviewand the Annual Review of Law and Social Science. His writing and research can also be found in a range of popular outlets, including The Los Angeles TimesThe Washington PostTimes Higher EducationSlate, GQ, and NPR 

 

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William “Bill” Spelman

 

Turning theory into practice has been the cornerstone of Bill Spelman's career. While on the City Council, Spelman championed downtown development, neighborhood-based service delivery, performance measurement, and civilian oversight of police operations. Spelman teaches courses in applied mathematics and statistics, urban policy and management, and criminal justice, and continues his research on police operations, prison policy, and community crime prevention. His books include: Criminal Incapacitation; Problem-Solving: Problem-oriented Policing in Newport News; and Repeat Offender Programs for Law Enforcement. Spelman also directs the Texas Institute for Public Problem Solving, which trains police officers and community residents in the practice of community policing.

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Denise Gilman

 

Denise Gilman teaches and directs the Immigration Clinic after having joined the clinical faculty at the University of Texas Law School in the fall of 2007. Professor Gilman has written and practiced extensively in the international human rights and immigrants' rights fields. From 2000 to 2005, Professor Gilman was Director of the Immigrant and Refugee Rights Project at the Washington Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs. At the Lawyers' Committee, Professor Gilman coordinated the representation of political asylum applicants by pro bono attorneys and engaged in advocacy on issues of significance to the newcomer community. She also investigated and litigated individual and impact cases involving law enforcement abuses against immigrants and discrimination against newcomers in housing and employment. From 1995-2000, Professor Gilman served as Human Rights Specialist at the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights at the Organization of American States and then Director of the Mexico Project at the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights (now Human Rights First).

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Hannah Walker

 

Dr. Hannah L. Walker is an associate professor of Government at the University of Texas at Austin. Her research examines the impact of the criminal justice system on American democracy with special attention to minority and immigrant communities. She is currently a visiting scholar at the Russell Sage Foundation (2023-2024). Her book, Mobilized by Injustice (available through Oxford University Press)explores the impact of experiences with the criminal justice system on political engagement.

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Michael Roy Hames García

 

Michael Hames-García studies and teaches about inequalities of race, class, gender, sexuality and disability in the criminal justice system from policing and criminal courts to incarceration and reentry. His current research considers the attitudes, motivations, and experiences of people engaged with overseeing local law enforcement. Police oversight is resisted by police unions as enfeebling and derided by abolitionists as concessionary; yet it has been touted as the gold standard for policing reform since the 1967 Kerner Commission. In addition to extensive archival data, the research draws from in-depth, semi-structured interviews with officials (independent auditors, internal affairs investigators, city bureaucrats, and local politicians), volunteers (police commissioners and review board members), and others (activists, attorneys, and journalists) who participate in community oversight of police and sheriff’s departments. The first phase of the research uses data (including around 50 interviews) from a mid-sized city in the northwestern United States, while the second will include about twice as many interviews from one of the nation’s most populous counties.

Associated Databases