Review by Choice Review
An attractive, expert study of police work in Ulster, by two scholars from The Queen's University, Belfast, is one of a growing library of works on the sociology of police work in divided societies. The authors are well grounded in the literature of their subject (Brewer has done work on the situation of the police in South Africa). They illuminate their study with interviews (apparently conducted by Magee) and by comparisons with law-enforcement agencies in South Africa and Israel. How, the researchers ask, does one go about routine police work in a radically divided society such as Northern Ireland? The answer seems to be, with much professional skill, common sense, patience, good humor, lots of luck, and the ever present fear of mutilation or death. Frequently police personnel find themselves in extreme danger when they are thrust into situations that might better be handled by army units. (Soldiers, in turn, hate activities that smack of police work.) The book calls to mind Chris Ryder's The RUC: A Force Under Fire (1989), Herbert and Allan Beigel's Beneath the Badge (1977), or James McClure's Spike Island (1980) and Cop World (1984). Brewer and Magee do not permit sociological methodology or jargon to obscure their convincing presentation of the essential humanity of their constabulary subjects who, despite their manifest frailties, come across as estimable characters, neither the monsters not the heroes of conflicting sectarian mythologies. Thorough bibliography and glossaries of RUC slang and sociological terms. Upper-division undergraduates and above.-R. H. Thompson, Indiana University-Purdue University at Indianapolis
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
