Legal Theories and the Police: Cognitive Bases of Criminal Justice Scholarship and Practice

• In Event: Police Strategies and Approaches

Abstract

While other legal professions actively utilize legal theories to give their practice of law meaning and substance, criminal justice (CJ) scholars and professionals have largely derived theories from social theories, if any theories are present at all. Legal theories in criminal justice are largely absent due to the disciplinary, scholarly, and practical disconnects and lack of independent work on the pervasive legal issues in criminal justice. The most important is the lack of sustained cognitive efforts to develop and advance policing theories. The richness of legal theories can provide support for theory and practice of not just the courts, but also police. This paper examines the rich and pluralistic base of legal theories applicable to policing. The bases of how legal theory can be applied to policing is the starting point before consideration of the application of specific legal theories. Through analysis of policing and specific legal theories healthier connections between components of the criminal justice systems and legal theories may be possible.

Authors

• Jerry Wayne Joplin, Guilford College

• Sanjay Marwah, California State University East Bay