Stop & Frisk and the Politics of Crime in Chicago

A comprehensive analysis of the stop & frisk policy, its origins as Chicago's predominant strategy for responding to violence, and its impact on crime and public opinion.

Stop & frisk has drawn a great deal of attention--and heated criticism--in recent years, for racial bias in its application and for the often violent and sometimes fatal nature of these encounters. In Stop & Frisk and the Politics of Crime in Chicago, Wesley G. Skogan offers a comprehensive analysis of the stop-and-frisk policy, its origins as Chicago's predominant strategy for responding to violence, and its impact on crime and public opinion. Drawing on a crime database of over 14 million incidents, interviews with 1,450 Chicagoans and 714 police officers, and the author's 30 years of studying, talking to, and riding along with Chicago police officers, Skogan looks at the inner workings of police departments and the history and politics of crime prevention that motivate these policies. Rather than looking at individual stops and how they are handled, he argues for considering stop & frisk as an organizational strategy, intimately tied to the move from reactive to preventive policing. Examining one of America's predominant crime control strategies, this book provides an essential analysis of the origins, implementation, and effects of stop & frisk in Chicago and on urban policing in general.

Wesley Skogan is Professor Emeritus at Northwestern University, with joint appointments in the Political Science Department and the University's Institute for Policy Research. His research focuses on community policing initiatives in Chicago and elsewhere; neighborhood and community responses to crime; and criminal victimization and the evaluation of service programs for victims. He is author or editor of seven books, including two with OUP: Police and Community in Chicago: A Tale of Three Cities (2006) and Community Policing, Chicago Style (1997). In 2015 he was awarded the 2015 Distinguished Achievement Award in Evidence-Based Crime Policy from the Center for Evidence-Based Crime Policy.