Police Power in Building Authoritarian and Social Control

A common hallmark of authoritarian states is the blurring of lines between military forces and police agencies, with increasingly militarized police and military tactics used by police in pursuit of agendas of control and domination. Sometimes that happens suddenly, for example after a military takeover. But in other contexts, there is a gradual process of transition after processes of nationalization and politicization of the police. In the United States, efforts to “professionalize” police agencies have often been characterized by increased standardization, hierarchy, and military-style approaches to discipline, training, and tactical operations. At the same time, over a period of decades, U.S. police agencies created an external-facing industry of police training and technical assistance at home and abroad as part of a global movement to foster Cold War counterinsurgency. In the fourth session of our Criminal Law as a Tool of Authoritarian Control speaker series, historian Stuart Schrader will join us to talk about these dynamics, as well as his forthcoming book on how police in the U.S. have gained sway in the sphere of politics at the local, state, and national levels from the 1960s to the present through police unions, and what these efforts may foretell about how police formations are vulnerable to authoritarian creep.

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Speaker

Stuart Schrader is an associate professor of History and the director of the Chloe Center for the Critical Study of Racism, Immigration, and Colonialism at Johns Hopkins University. He is the author of Badges Without Borders: How Global Counterinsurgency Transformed American Policing (University of California Press, 2019) and the forthcoming Blue Power: How Police Organized to Protect and Serve Themselves (Basic Books, 2026).

The Criminal Law as a Tool of Authoritarian Control speaker series is organized by Katy Naples-Mitchell, Program Director of the Program in Criminal Justice Policy and Management, and Sandra Susan Smith, Guggenheim Professor of Criminal Justice (HKS); Faculty Director, Program in Criminal Justice Policy and Management; Professor of Sociology (FAS).