Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Meaningful attention to firearms proficiency and the use of deadly force was absent during the first half century of US police history. The training introduced rather casually during the next half century was sporadic, as well as typically quite removed from the practical needs of police officers. As a result, the first century of US policing reflects a negligible connection between formal approaches to firearms and deadly force training, and the conditions under which officers needed to defend themselves and others from dangerous persons. Beginning in the 1960s, a number of entities emerged to presumably influence a variety of perceived shortcomings in police capabilities, methods and field performance. These took form in state police officer standards and training commissions, accreditation organizations, professional associations of training executives as well as trainers, and several US Supreme Court cases. One purpose behind their combined efforts was raising minimum standards, while another was standardization within training domains that some researchers had called for as early as the late 1960s. With regard to firearms and deadly force training, however, empirical research over the past decade indicates that individual departments exercise a great deal of latitude in both the nature and extent of their training and qualification programs. These findings raise questions about whether contemporary programs produce comparable skills, experiences or capabilities among police officers. This has potentially serious consequences for both police officers and the public.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This paper is based on ethnographic fieldwork and interviews conducted within the Oslo police force, mainly among rank and file officers. As problem-oriented policing (POP) had been under implementation for four years at the time of the fieldwork, this process was brought to attention although the purpose of the research project was to investigate the relationship between the police and ethnic minorities. The rank and file officers had contradictory perceptions about POP. It appeared that the implementation of POP was met with irritation and resistance in all three stations involved in the research. The questions raised in the paper are: Why did change in police strategies constitute a problem? What caused the resistance? Does the implementation of POP have any impact on the policing of ethnic minorities? It is suggested that the rank and file police officers’ sub cultural perceptions of what “real police work” is, including excitement, and the desire to “catch the crook”, make them resist the change in the organisation towards a more intellectual, situational and preventive approach to crime. Furthermore hierarchy may counteract organisational change. It has been suggested that community policing increases police rank and file autonomy. In Oslo, however, the demands about documentation of POP tasks, rather decreased police discretion and consequently produced resistance to POP.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: The coordinated market economies of continental and Northern Europe are distinguished by their comparative institutional advantage in the provision of specific skills. In the context of high skill-based technological change and structural change brought on by trade and financial market capitalization, the assumption that one’s initial qualification suffices to find stable employment throughout the career no longer holds. The key challenge facing coordinated market economies therefore involves making qualification systems more flexible without undermining investment in specific skills. This paper argues that wage compression and government subsidization of training costs play a central role in resolving contracting problems in investment in specific skills where qualification systems are made more flexible. Evidence for this claim is provide by both quantitative evidence relating the flexibility of qualification systems in coordinated market economies (Germany, Japan, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Belgium, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland and Austria) to the levels of wage compression and training subsidization as well as case studies of the construction sector in cases of both reform success and failure.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: In 1863, San Francisco’s local government passed a General Order that prohibited public appearance “in a dress not belonging to his or her sex.” This prohibition was embedded in a broader “good morals and decency” law, which also criminalized indecent exposure, acts, and performances. From its inception, cross-dressing law was concerned with public gender transgressions, and it dovetailed with numerous other local laws concerned with the public visibility of “problem bodies.” In this paper, I analyze the relationship between these laws and develop three interrelated arguments. First, I assert that San Francisco’s cross-dressing law did not operate in a vacuum, but was intimately connected to efforts to police Chinese immigrants, prostitutes and those deemed deformed or diseased. Second, I argue that municipal “problem bodies” laws operated through strategies of spatial regulation, imbuing designated spaces with sexualized and racialized meanings, and impacting the socio-spatial order of the city. Finally, I identify some of the contradictory effects of policing problem bodies through spatial regulation, focusing on tensions between different laws, as well as entrepreneurs who appropriated legal strategies for economic gain. In conclusion, I discuss implications of this research for interdisciplinary, sociological studies of gender transgressions and their social control.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed