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Good Cop-Bad Cop: Mass Media and the Cycle of Police Reform
Jarret Lovell
(Paperback)
2003, 189 pages
ISBN: 1-881798-49-6
$26.50

"Good Cop/Bad Cop" offers the first extended review of the influence of the mass media on local and federal law enforcement in the U.S. Adopting an interdisciplinary approach and drawing upon popular characterizations of law enforcement from movies, newspapers, television, and literature, this book argues that police reform is inextricably linked to the rise and technological development of the mass media. It illustrates how new forms of media communication generate new forms of information about police practices. Periodically, this new information portrays law enforcement in a less-than-favorable light, ushering in public demands for police reform.

Law enforcement officials also exert a powerful influence upon media coverage of crime and justice policies and practices. Data from the author's recent national study on police media relations provide insight into the public relations activities performed daily by police spokespersons. Good Cop/Bad Cop casts the mass media as central to police reform, and argues that a free and independent press is a prerequisite to innovations and improvements in policing. Jarret S. Lovell is Assistant Professor of Criminal Justice at California State University, Fullerton.

"Lovell describes the extent to which the police have always been media-sensitive and how they are now caught in a world wide web of electronic communications and swim in a sea of images…" Excerpt from the Foreword by Prof. Peter Kirby Manning, Northeastern University.

"Overall, this book is a must for law enforcement agencies who are trying to form a public information office, and it also is a must for public information officers who are just starting out their careers. Lovell gives excellent insight on the history of law enforcement and the media and how the two have come together over much disparity..." from a review by Texas criminal investigator Dana Richerson in Police Practice and Research. "Lovell's book is both eye-opener and cautionary, a solid foundation for further classroom exploration...," Penelope J. Hanke, review in Criminal Justice Review 30(1), 2005.

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