Robert Nixon and Police Torture in Chicago, 1871-1971

Bibliographic Data

ID4157348
AuthorsL Mara Dodge (Westfield State University, corresponding author)
Year2017
Volume104
Issue2
Pages520-520
Publication date2017-09-01
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of American History (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0021-8723 • E-ISSN: 1945-2314
PublisherOxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1093/jahist/jax243
OpenAlexW2748423314
LanguageEN
Citations received5

In Robert Nixon and Police Torture in Chicago Elizabeth Dale provides a thought-provoking, well-written, and meticulously researched history of police violence. Using newspaper accounts and the records of eighty-six court trials, she identifies four hundred cases involving defendants who claimed that police used force or coercion, usually in an effort to extract confessions. The coercive techniques included physical abuse, deprivation, psychological pressure, and holding suspects incommunicado. Dale, a former Chicago civil rights attorney and a professor of history and law, is ideally qualified to explore these issues. Chapter 1 provides a concise overview of police torture from 1871 to 1936. For each decade, Dale traces changes in torture techniques, shifting public responses, and reformers' (mostly failed) efforts to curtail these practices. She also chronicles the evolution of Illinois and U.S. Supreme Court rulings. In 1936 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the use of violence to obtain confessions was unconstitutional (Brown v. Mississippi). Dale argues that violence continued but shifted form, relying more heavily on “techniques of invisibility” that would not leave visible marks (p. 102

Coercion (linguistics · Criminology · Human rights · Newspaper · Political science · Sociology · Supreme court · Torture · Law · Torture, Ethics, and Law

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