Urgent Times: Policing and Rights in Inner-City Communities

by Tracey L. Meares, Dan M. Kahan, Joshua Cohen

Tracey Meares and Dan Kahan have performed a great public service....[They have] opened up a major debate on a promising idea about how to keep streets safe without throwing out essential legal safeguards. If you live where I live, you know that's a life-and-death issue. --The Reverend Eugene F. Rivers, 3d, from the Foreword

Through a searching examination of the constitutional and moral issues of community policing, Tracey Meares and Dan Kahan challenge us to reconsider our ideas about how to fight urban crime and about the role of rights in a democracy. Activists and legal scholars-including Alan Dershowitz and Jean Bethke Elshtain-offer spirited responses.

"The New Democracy Forum series is a civic treasure....A truly good idea, carried out with intelligence and panache." --Robert Pinsky

The New Democracy Forum is a series of short paperback originals exploring creative solutions to our most urgent national concerns.

Genres: Sociology

136 pages, Paperback

First published November 10, 1999

About the author

Tracey L. Meares is the Walton Hale Hamilton Professor of Law at Yale Law School.

Before arriving at Yale Law School, she was Max Pam Professor of Law and Director of the Center for Studies in Criminal Justice at the University of Chicago Law School.