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RR 2007/270 Encyclopedia of Police Science (3rd edition) Edited by Jack R. Greene Routledge New York, NY and London 2007 2 vols ISBN 978 0 415 97000 6 £215 $375
Keywords Encyclopedias, Police science
Review DOI 10.1108/09504120710775345
"Police science" is not a term that will be familiar to most people. Everyone knows that forensic science forms part of police work - indeed it has a long and honorable history. But as well as including forensic science, police science encompasses criminology, psychology, criminal justice, correctional administration and penology, jurisprudence, and any other "ologies" and sciences in the ever-growing police science field.
The second edition of Encyclopedia of Police Science was published in 1996. However, events such as the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 in the US have created major changes to policing, including moving policing from a local to a global interest, and thus all books published prior to 9/11 have, to a large extent, become out of date. So the publication of the third edition of this work is therefore timely.
Policing is constantly changing as a result of the information age and its resulting technology. In the nineteenth century police technology involved a strong pair of shoes, a truncheon, maybe a firearm, and "walking the beat". The policeman collected and acted on information as an individual, rather than as a police system. It was only with the introduction of cars and radios that the police obtained greater mobility, although it did not lead to more information as the radios tended to be used simply for managing police officers at a distance, rather than for the gathering of information about crime. Even with their global dimension, modern-day police agencies still have...