HST 341 Policing in U.S. History

DPDS

This course examines the evolution of law enforcement as a means of controlling unruly populations and punishing disorder. It begins with the Night Watch and the constable system of the Colonial Era. It tracks this development through slave patrols, western vigilante organizations, the Texas Rangers, the Ku Klux Klan, 19th-century urban municipal police, modern professional departments, and finally, the establishment of militarized police forces equipped with Special Weapons and Tactics. It explains how a nation founded on skepticism about authority and military occupation came to develop the world’s most elaborate and highly developed system of policing and incarceration. The course explains who gets authorized with the means of institutionalized violence, as well as the specific targets of their policing, including Native Americans, slaves, immigrants, labor unions, political protestors, “sexual deviants,” and marginalized communities of color. Cross-listed with CRJ 341