Argumentative Essays on Police Brutality

Police brutality is the excessive and unwarranted use of force by law enforcement against an individual or a group. It is an extreme form of police misconduct and is a civil rights violation.

The term "police brutality" was first used in Britain in the mid-19th century, by The Puppet-Show magazine(a short-lived rival to Punch) complaining in September 1848. The first use of the term in the American press was in 1872 when the Chicago Tribune[4] reported the beating of a civilian who was under arrest at the Harrison Street Police Station.

The persistence of police brutality can be linked to a collective failure of the criminal justice system. Governments enacting "hard on crime" policies, poor police training, and a lack of legal repercussions for officers who use excessive force against civilians all increase the likelihood of police brutality occurring. Additionally, social issues like racial discrimination and poverty can exacerbate the brutality and its effects on marginalized communities.

The highest number of police killings is in Brazil, amounting to 6,160.
55% of Americans said they are not confident that police are trained adequately to avoid excessive use of force.
From 2013 to 2020, police killed more than 9,000 civilians in the US, at an average of nearly 1,100 per year.
28% of those killed by police in 2020 were black Americans despite making up only 13% of the population.

1. Miller, M. (1998). Police brutality. Yale L. & Pol'y Rev., 17, 149. (https://heinonline.org/HOL/LandingPage?handle=hein.journals/yalpr17&div=8&id=&page=)
2. Reiss, A. J. (1972). Police Brutality?. In Readings in Criminology and Penology (pp. 456-476). Columbia University Press. (https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.7312/dres92534-051/html)
3. Crenshaw, K. W., Ritchie, A. J., Anspach, R., Gilmer, R., & Harris, L. (2015). Say her name: Resisting police brutality against black women. (https://scholarship.law.columbia.edu/faculty_scholarship/3226/)
4. Reynolds-Stenson, H. (2018). Protesting the police: Anti-police brutality claims as a predictor of police repression of protest. Social movement studies, 17(1), 48-63. (https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14742837.2017.1381592)
5. Smith, B. W., & Holmes, M. D. (2003). Community accountability, minority threat, and police brutality: An examination of civil rights criminal complaints. Criminology, 41(4), 1035-1064. (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1745-9125.2003.tb01013.x)
6. Mitchell, M. J., & Wood, C. H. (1999). Ironies of citizenship: skin color, police brutality, and the challenge to democracy in Brazil. Social forces, 77(3), 1001-1020. (https://academic.oup.com/sf/article-abstract/77/3/1001/2233808)
7. Costa, A. T. M. (2011). Police brutality in Brazil: authoritarian legacy or institutional weakness?. Latin American Perspectives, 38(5), 19-32.v (https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0094582X10391631)
8. Holmes IV, O. (2020). Police brutality and four other ways racism kills Black people. Equality, Diversity and Inclusion: An International Journal, 39(7), 803-809. (https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/EDI-06-2020-0151/full/html)
10. Magaloni, B., & Rodriguez, L. (2020). Institutionalized police brutality: Torture, the militarization of security, and the reform of inquisitorial criminal justice in Mexico. American Political Science Review, 114(4), 1013-1034. (https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/american-political-science-review/article/abs/institutionalized-police-brutality-torture-the-militarization-of-security-and-the-reform-of-inquisitorial-criminal-justice-in-mexico/1FB267963EE824E40B4AC6C9644D19B2)