cover image Edge of the Knife

Edge of the Knife

Paul Chevigny. New Press, $25 (319pp) ISBN 978-1-56584-183-3

The author is a professor at NYU Law School who has written a classic book on excessive police violence in New York City (Police Power, Pantheon, 1969). The present work displays his same thorough scholarship, fieldwork, and access to guarded sources, such as internal police memos, but its subject matter goes beyond ""policing the police"" to bring together many strands of contemporary policing. First, it enters the complex field of comparative policing by considering six different police forces: Los Angeles, New York, Sao Paulo, Buenos Aires, Jamaica, and Mexico City. Second, it becomes a sociological study of the circumstances in which societies may resort to excess police violence as a method of social control. Third, in its thoughtful analysis and prescriptions in areas such as civilian review, it furthers understanding of the interdependence of components of criminal justice systems. The text is readable but not flamboyant. Highly recommended for criminal justice collections.-Janice Dunham, John Jay Coll. Lib., New York