David Thacher
Datos Biográficos
| ID | 285791 |
|---|---|
| NOMBRE | David Thacher |
| NOMBRES | David |
| APELLIDO | Thacher |
| FIRMA | THACHER D |
| AFILIACIONES | University of Michigan |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-2618-877X |
| VERIFICADO | Sí |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 23 |
| TOTAL DE CITAS | 278 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 23 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 0 |
| PRIMER AÑO DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2001 |
| AÑO MÁS RECIENTE DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2025 |
| ÍNDICE H | 7 |
The invention of urgency
How the Public Became the Caller
Why is the police role so broad in the United States today? Carceral state scholars have investigated how and why policymakers have treated so many social problems as policing problems, but they have not yet recognized the degree to which the call-for-service system has marginalized political control over police strategy. This Article traces the historical sources of this arrangement through extensive archival research into its evolution. We find…
The emergence and spread of the summons in lieu of arrest, 1907–1980
The Learning Model of Use-of-Force Reviews
Since the 1970s, police departments have subjected the use of force by their officers to increasingly stringent oversight, but those efforts have struggled against the difficulty of codifying the complex and idiosyncratic judgments that police work requires. In response, some departments have developed new models of oversight that use routine incident reviews partly as a tool for learning in order to document the continually surprising circumstan…
How law shapes policing
Scholars have been skeptical about the capacity of law to shape what police do, but that skepticism results from a myopic view of the relationship between legal systems and policing practices. This paper develops a more holistic view of that relationship by exploring the legal standards, social understandings, and policing practices that played a role in the regulation of alcohol and drunkenness from roughly 1750–1860 in the United States. From t…
Salvaging on the Coast of Erebus Bay, King William Island
Over the course of the 19th century, many European explorers sailed in search of a Northwest Passage through the Canadian Arctic. These journeys brought them into territory occupied by Inuit, who both traded with the explorers for various goods and interacted with the material that they left behind. This study examines the remains of two ship’s boats from three sites on King William Island (NgLj-2, NgLj-3, and NgLj-8) that were abandoned by membe…
The Aspiration of Scientific Policing
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. As you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the 'Save PDF' action button
Applying GIS and statistical analysis to assess the correlation of human behaviour and ephemeral architectural features among Palaeo-Eskimo sites on Southern Baffin Island, Nunavut
The perception of value
Scholars have sometimes argued that we should conceive of social research as a form of moral inquiry, at least in part, but none have made clear exactly how and why observational research can make a distinctive contribution to moral insight. Returning to an era before the modern distinction between social science and the humanities became entrenched, this article argues that Adam Smith provided a clear and forceful rationale for the moral role of…
Perils of Value Neutrality
The vast majority of contemporary social scientists have distanced themselves from moral reflection and the academic disciplines that engage in it. Throughout his long career Philip Selznick took a different path, engaging deeply with the moral content of the concepts he employed. This paper argues that he had good reasons to do so. Value neutrality in social research can fatally sever inquiry’s connection to the practical concerns that originall…
Olmsted's Police
The urbanization of nineteenth century America led to enormous changes in American criminal justice, as the rise of this dramatically more complex kind of human settlement posed new problems for legal regulation. Some of those problems are familiar. Many reformers emphasized the way cities eroded traditional controls on predatory crime, and they viewed modern police forces, public prosecution, and the modern penitentiary as a means of substitutin…
Order Maintenance Policing
Public spaces are shared spaces, and the people who share them oft en disagree about how they can legitimately be used. Th eir complaints range from the petty gripes of thin-skinned people unhappy with the hustle and bustle of urban life to the desperate pleas of the seriously aggrieved—complaints about raucous protestors in the city square trying to eff ect political change, complaints about hookers and drug pushers selling their vices on the si…
The Professional Association’s Role
Research for the front lines
It is a truism in the sociology of science that scientific knowledge bears the imprint of particular perspectives, interests, and values. In social science, it is especially common to find that research serves the needs of managers and policymakers better than it serves the needs of front-line workers. This paper analyzes the traces of that tendency in police research. By examining three features of front-line police work (the need to improve pro…
The Rise of Criminal Background Screening in Rental Housing
This article investigates the recent rise of criminal background screening in rental housing as a case study of the diffusion of actuarial social control. That case study suggests that actuarial techniques have spread more widely through the crime prevention field than sociolegal scholars have recognized, replacing disciplinary efforts to diagnose and alter the behavior of individuals with actuarial efforts to identify and isolate high-risk group…
The Normative Case Study
The case study is one of the major research strategies in contemporary social science. Although most discussions of case study research presume that cases contribute to explanatory theory, this article draws from recent literature about ethical reasoning to argue that case studies can also contribute to normative theory—to theories about the ideals we should pursue and the obligations we should accept. This conclusion suggests that contrary to so…
Deliberative Policy Analysis
The Local Role in Homeland Security
There has been considerable discussion since September 11 of the enormous resource that local police potentially represent in the fight against terrorism. This article identifies limits to the local role in homeland security by analyzing a case study of Dearborn, Michigan. Partly because Dearborn is home to one of the largest concentrations of Arabs in the United States, its experience with homeland security highlights two kinds of burdens that c…
The Casuistical Turn in Planning Ethics
Case studies have recently played a prominent role in the study of ethical issues in planning. To clarify the role that cases can play, this article investigates how two other professional fields (law and medical ethics) have used cases to analyze practical ethics. The author argues that law and medicine use studies to develop “moral taxonomies”—classifications of important cases that help clarify the meaning and limits of ambiguous values, princ…
Interorganizational Partnerships as Inchoate Hierarchies
Scholars often view interorganizational partnerships through the conceptual lens of social network theory. This article argues that some partnerships can be usefully viewed in a different way—as organizations in development rather than as examples of unstructured cooperation. Examining two partnerships between police departments and community development corporations, the article shows how common problems associated with unstructured cooperation …
Police Research and the Humanities
Managing Value Conflict in Public Policy
Policy issues are often characterized by conflicting values. Conventionally, students of public policy have conceptualized government's response to value conflicts as a matter of “balancing” competing goals, or striking trade‐offs among values. In this paper we argue that this way of managing value conflicts represents only one possibility from a larger and more varied repertoire of strategies that draw from more complex models of practical reaso…
Conflicting Values in Community Policing
Police reformers in the early 21st century place great importance on the development of police-community partnerships, but they have not recognized the deep obstacles that these relationships face. This study argues that the central problems of working in partnership involve conflict over values: Different organizations advance different social values, and when the partners who cling to them try to collaborate, conflict flares up at the point of …
Managing Value Conflict in Public Policy
Policy issues are often characterized by conflicting values. Conventionally, students of public policy have conceptualized government's response to value conflicts as a matter of “balancing” competing goals, or striking trade‐offs among values. In this paper we argue that this way of managing value conflicts represents only one possibility from a larger and more varied repertoire of strategies that draw from more complex models of practical reaso…
The Normative Case Study
The case study is one of the major research strategies in contemporary social science. Although most discussions of case study research presume that cases contribute to explanatory theory, this article draws from recent literature about ethical reasoning to argue that case studies can also contribute to normative theory—to theories about the ideals we should pursue and the obligations we should accept. This conclusion suggests that contrary to so…
The Rise of Criminal Background Screening in Rental Housing
This article investigates the recent rise of criminal background screening in rental housing as a case study of the diffusion of actuarial social control. That case study suggests that actuarial techniques have spread more widely through the crime prevention field than sociolegal scholars have recognized, replacing disciplinary efforts to diagnose and alter the behavior of individuals with actuarial efforts to identify and isolate high-risk group…
The Local Role in Homeland Security
There has been considerable discussion since September 11 of the enormous resource that local police potentially represent in the fight against terrorism. This article identifies limits to the local role in homeland security by analyzing a case study of Dearborn, Michigan. Partly because Dearborn is home to one of the largest concentrations of Arabs in the United States, its experience with homeland security highlights two kinds of burdens that c…
Conflicting Values in Community Policing
Police reformers in the early 21st century place great importance on the development of police-community partnerships, but they have not recognized the deep obstacles that these relationships face. This study argues that the central problems of working in partnership involve conflict over values: Different organizations advance different social values, and when the partners who cling to them try to collaborate, conflict flares up at the point of …
Research for the front lines
It is a truism in the sociology of science that scientific knowledge bears the imprint of particular perspectives, interests, and values. In social science, it is especially common to find that research serves the needs of managers and policymakers better than it serves the needs of front-line workers. This paper analyzes the traces of that tendency in police research. By examining three features of front-line police work (the need to improve pro…
Interorganizational Partnerships as Inchoate Hierarchies
Scholars often view interorganizational partnerships through the conceptual lens of social network theory. This article argues that some partnerships can be usefully viewed in a different way—as organizations in development rather than as examples of unstructured cooperation. Examining two partnerships between police departments and community development corporations, the article shows how common problems associated with unstructured cooperation …
Applying GIS and statistical analysis to assess the correlation of human behaviour and ephemeral architectural features among Palaeo-Eskimo sites on Southern Baffin Island, Nunavut
The Casuistical Turn in Planning Ethics
Case studies have recently played a prominent role in the study of ethical issues in planning. To clarify the role that cases can play, this article investigates how two other professional fields (law and medical ethics) have used cases to analyze practical ethics. The author argues that law and medicine use studies to develop “moral taxonomies”—classifications of important cases that help clarify the meaning and limits of ambiguous values, princ…
Olmsted's Police
The urbanization of nineteenth century America led to enormous changes in American criminal justice, as the rise of this dramatically more complex kind of human settlement posed new problems for legal regulation. Some of those problems are familiar. Many reformers emphasized the way cities eroded traditional controls on predatory crime, and they viewed modern police forces, public prosecution, and the modern penitentiary as a means of substitutin…
How the Public Became the Caller
Why is the police role so broad in the United States today? Carceral state scholars have investigated how and why policymakers have treated so many social problems as policing problems, but they have not yet recognized the degree to which the call-for-service system has marginalized political control over police strategy. This Article traces the historical sources of this arrangement through extensive archival research into its evolution. We find…
The Learning Model of Use-of-Force Reviews
Since the 1970s, police departments have subjected the use of force by their officers to increasingly stringent oversight, but those efforts have struggled against the difficulty of codifying the complex and idiosyncratic judgments that police work requires. In response, some departments have developed new models of oversight that use routine incident reviews partly as a tool for learning in order to document the continually surprising circumstan…
The Aspiration of Scientific Policing
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. As you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the 'Save PDF' action button
Deliberative Policy Analysis
The Professional Association’s Role
Police Research and the Humanities
Conflicting Values in Community Policing
Police reformers in the early 21st century place great importance on the development of police-community partnerships, but they have not recognized the deep obstacles that these relationships face. This study argues that the central problems of working in partnership involve conflict over values: Different organizations advance different social values, and when the partners who cling to them try to collaborate, conflict flares up at the point of …
The Casuistical Turn in Planning Ethics
Case studies have recently played a prominent role in the study of ethical issues in planning. To clarify the role that cases can play, this article investigates how two other professional fields (law and medical ethics) have used cases to analyze practical ethics. The author argues that law and medicine use studies to develop “moral taxonomies”—classifications of important cases that help clarify the meaning and limits of ambiguous values, princ…
Interorganizational Partnerships as Inchoate Hierarchies
Scholars often view interorganizational partnerships through the conceptual lens of social network theory. This article argues that some partnerships can be usefully viewed in a different way—as organizations in development rather than as examples of unstructured cooperation. Examining two partnerships between police departments and community development corporations, the article shows how common problems associated with unstructured cooperation …
Police Research and the Humanities
Managing Value Conflict in Public Policy
Policy issues are often characterized by conflicting values. Conventionally, students of public policy have conceptualized government's response to value conflicts as a matter of “balancing” competing goals, or striking trade‐offs among values. In this paper we argue that this way of managing value conflicts represents only one possibility from a larger and more varied repertoire of strategies that draw from more complex models of practical reaso…
Deliberative Policy Analysis
The Local Role in Homeland Security
There has been considerable discussion since September 11 of the enormous resource that local police potentially represent in the fight against terrorism. This article identifies limits to the local role in homeland security by analyzing a case study of Dearborn, Michigan. Partly because Dearborn is home to one of the largest concentrations of Arabs in the United States, its experience with homeland security highlights two kinds of burdens that c…
The Normative Case Study
The case study is one of the major research strategies in contemporary social science. Although most discussions of case study research presume that cases contribute to explanatory theory, this article draws from recent literature about ethical reasoning to argue that case studies can also contribute to normative theory—to theories about the ideals we should pursue and the obligations we should accept. This conclusion suggests that contrary to so…
Research for the front lines
It is a truism in the sociology of science that scientific knowledge bears the imprint of particular perspectives, interests, and values. In social science, it is especially common to find that research serves the needs of managers and policymakers better than it serves the needs of front-line workers. This paper analyzes the traces of that tendency in police research. By examining three features of front-line police work (the need to improve pro…
The Rise of Criminal Background Screening in Rental Housing
This article investigates the recent rise of criminal background screening in rental housing as a case study of the diffusion of actuarial social control. That case study suggests that actuarial techniques have spread more widely through the crime prevention field than sociolegal scholars have recognized, replacing disciplinary efforts to diagnose and alter the behavior of individuals with actuarial efforts to identify and isolate high-risk group…
The Professional Association’s Role
Order Maintenance Policing
Public spaces are shared spaces, and the people who share them oft en disagree about how they can legitimately be used. Th eir complaints range from the petty gripes of thin-skinned people unhappy with the hustle and bustle of urban life to the desperate pleas of the seriously aggrieved—complaints about raucous protestors in the city square trying to eff ect political change, complaints about hookers and drug pushers selling their vices on the si…
Perils of Value Neutrality
The vast majority of contemporary social scientists have distanced themselves from moral reflection and the academic disciplines that engage in it. Throughout his long career Philip Selznick took a different path, engaging deeply with the moral content of the concepts he employed. This paper argues that he had good reasons to do so. Value neutrality in social research can fatally sever inquiry’s connection to the practical concerns that originall…
Olmsted's Police
The urbanization of nineteenth century America led to enormous changes in American criminal justice, as the rise of this dramatically more complex kind of human settlement posed new problems for legal regulation. Some of those problems are familiar. Many reformers emphasized the way cities eroded traditional controls on predatory crime, and they viewed modern police forces, public prosecution, and the modern penitentiary as a means of substitutin…
The perception of value
Scholars have sometimes argued that we should conceive of social research as a form of moral inquiry, at least in part, but none have made clear exactly how and why observational research can make a distinctive contribution to moral insight. Returning to an era before the modern distinction between social science and the humanities became entrenched, this article argues that Adam Smith provided a clear and forceful rationale for the moral role of…
Applying GIS and statistical analysis to assess the correlation of human behaviour and ephemeral architectural features among Palaeo-Eskimo sites on Southern Baffin Island, Nunavut
Salvaging on the Coast of Erebus Bay, King William Island
Over the course of the 19th century, many European explorers sailed in search of a Northwest Passage through the Canadian Arctic. These journeys brought them into territory occupied by Inuit, who both traded with the explorers for various goods and interacted with the material that they left behind. This study examines the remains of two ship’s boats from three sites on King William Island (NgLj-2, NgLj-3, and NgLj-8) that were abandoned by membe…
The Aspiration of Scientific Policing
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. As you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the 'Save PDF' action button
How law shapes policing
Scholars have been skeptical about the capacity of law to shape what police do, but that skepticism results from a myopic view of the relationship between legal systems and policing practices. This paper develops a more holistic view of that relationship by exploring the legal standards, social understandings, and policing practices that played a role in the regulation of alcohol and drunkenness from roughly 1750–1860 in the United States. From t…
The Learning Model of Use-of-Force Reviews
Since the 1970s, police departments have subjected the use of force by their officers to increasingly stringent oversight, but those efforts have struggled against the difficulty of codifying the complex and idiosyncratic judgments that police work requires. In response, some departments have developed new models of oversight that use routine incident reviews partly as a tool for learning in order to document the continually surprising circumstan…
The emergence and spread of the summons in lieu of arrest, 1907–1980
How the Public Became the Caller
Why is the police role so broad in the United States today? Carceral state scholars have investigated how and why policymakers have treated so many social problems as policing problems, but they have not yet recognized the degree to which the call-for-service system has marginalized political control over police strategy. This Article traces the historical sources of this arrangement through extensive archival research into its evolution. We find…
The invention of urgency
Political science (17 obras) · Sociology (15 obras) · Law (14 obras) · Law (12 obras) · Crime Patterns and Interventions (10 obras) · Policing Practices and Perceptions (7 obras) · Criminology (6 obras) · Psychology (6 obras) · Business (5 obras) · Computer Science (5 obras)