New Books in Policing, Incarceration, and Reform21 Jan

Brian D. Behnken, "Brown and Blue: Mexican Americans, Law Enforcement, and Civil Rights in the Southwest, 1935-2025" (UNC Press, 2025)

How police abuse ignited the Chicano movement in the Southwest

Brown and Blue: Mexican Americans, Law Enforcement, and Civil Rights in the Southwest, 1935-2025 (UNC Press, 2025) offers a sweeping history of Mexican American interactions with law enforcement and the criminal justice system in the US Southwest. Looking primarily at Arizona, California, New Mexico, and Texas, Brown and Blue tells a complex story: Violent, often racist acts committed by police against Mexican American people sparked protests demanding reform, and criminal justice authorities sometimes responded positively to these protests with measures such as recruiting Mexican Americans into local police forces and altering training procedures at police academies.
Brian D. Behnken demonstrates the central role that the struggle for police reform played in the twentieth-century Chicano movement, and the ways its relevance continues to the present. By linking social activism and law enforcement, Behnken illuminates how the policing issues of today developed and what reform remains to be done.

Guest: Brian Behnken is a professor of history at Iowa State University. He specializes in African American and Mexican American history, with an emphasis on civil rights activism and comparative race relations. He has published widely within these fields and has also expanded his research focus to explore racial violence, law enforcement, popular culture, and nationalism as they relate to African American and Latino/a/x peoples.

Host: Michael Stauch is an associate professor of history at the University of Toledo and the author of Wildcat of the Streets: Detroit in the Age of Community Policing, published by the University of Pennsylvania Press in 2025.

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Episoder(444)

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12 Sep 45min

R. Joshua Scannell, "The Carceral Surround" (U Minnesota Press, 2026)

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12 Sep 36min

Bordering On Indifference: Immigration Agents Negotiating Race and Morality

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13 Aug 49min

Valena Beety, "Pink Crime: Fighting Against the Criminalization of Motherhood, Pregnancy, and Queer Identity" (New Press, 2026)

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4 Aug 25min

Asher Emanuel, "The Valley: Crime and Punishment in a New Zealand City" (Bridget Williams Books, 2026)

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3 Aug 1h

Matthew Ritger, "Houses of Correction: Carceral Institutions and Humanist Culture in Early Modern England" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2026)

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27 Jul 50min

Meredith Gamer, "City of the Gallows: Art and Execution in Eighteenth-Century London" (Yale UP, 2026)

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27 Jul 1h 6min

Cast Out: A Call For A Forgiving Society in an Age of Incarceration

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23 Jul 58min