Professor Joh Publishes Essay on New York PD Slowdown
Elizabeth Joh has published an essay in Life of the Law on the recent unofficial but widely acknowledged work slowdown by New York City police. The action, which resulted in dramatically fewer arrests and summonses during the early weeks of 2015, has prompted questions about what proper levels of enforcement should be.
"The truth is that we really don't know and rarely agree on what ‘normal' enforcement is," writes Joh. "As police researchers have demonstrated many times, police work is highly discretionary. Enforcement targeting every legal violation is impossible, so we leave it largely to the police to decide. Crack down on public drinking or turn a blind eye? That may depend on whether you're in a college town or an inner city neighborhood. And even if a police department has its own enforcement priorities, individual officers themselves demonstrate wide variation in how they exercise their powers."
Professor Joh's scholarship focuses on criminal procedure and policing, with a special emphasis on DNA evidence, undercover policing, and new surveillance technologies.