Violence Work: State Power and the Limits of Police

Micol Seigel redefines policing as “violence work,” showing how it is shaped by its role of channeling state violence and how its status as a civilian institution obscures its ties to militarization.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 312 pages
Publication date: 27 August 2018
Publisher: Duke University Press

Micol Seigel presents a novel interpretation of the most fundamental manifestation of state authority: the police. By emphasizing the interconnectedness of policing, the state, and global capital, Seigel reimagines policing as "violence work," revealing how it is molded by its function of directing state violence. She explores this dynamic by examining the establishment, dissolution, and consequences of the U.S. State Department's Office of Public Safety (OPS), which specialized in training police forces internationally between 1962 and 1974. Officially a civilian organization, the OPS expanded and operated in military and counterinsurgency domains in ways that violated the boundaries intended to confine the police within civilian, public, and local spheres. Seigel traces the career trajectories of OPS agents after their agency closed, demonstrating how police practices, writ large, are rooted in violence, particularly against people of color, the poor, and working people. Moreover, she shows how understanding the police as a civilian, public, and local institution legitimizes state violence while perpetuating the illusion of state benevolence.

Weight: 428g
Dimension: 155 x 234 x 18 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781478000174