The Sheriff and the Constable

Moley, Raymond

doi:10.1177/000271622914600103

Cited by 6 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 0 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Despite their ubiquity and longevity in American society, sheriffs do not appear often in the political science literature. Scholars of southern politics noted that sheriffs held sway in local matters (Key 1949), but the political science research focused on sheriffs was limited to the office's value in local party machine politics (Moley 1929) and the effects of sheriffs' leadership style on their department's bureaucratic organization (Henderson 1975). Today, the literature on county sheriffs is small but growing.…”

Section: Literature 21 Political Science On Sheriffsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Rise (and Fall) of Elected Sheriffs

DeHart

2020

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Voters in almost every state elect county sheriffs but political science has only recently turned its attention to this important office. In this paper, I trace the historical processes that led Americans to begin electing sheriffs in the 18th and 19th centuries, as well as modern reforms to reverse that trend. Pairing newly-collected data on the timing of reforms that democratized local offices with narrative history, I show that the institution of elected sheriff spread gradually across the country and, in many states, Americans were deeply conflicted about subjecting this important office to popular choice. One finding is that sheriffs, in most states, became elective sooner than prosecutors and judges. I also provide evidence of the institution's slow retrenchment: today, there are four states and thirteen counties, home to over 20 million Americans, that do not elect sheriffs. The paper concludes with a discussion about the national importance of this local institution in American politics.

show abstract

Section: Literature 21 Political Science On Sheriffsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Rise (and Fall) of Elected Sheriffs

DeHart

2020

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Missouri's movement toward state-level policing was percolating during a fertile period and was given support by both academic and popular literature. The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences, for example, had published two articles directly related to this issue in 1929; they focused on the ineffectiveness of the sheriff and constable and the positive attributes of the state police to shore up the weaknesses in decentralized policing (Moley, 1929;Adams, 1929). Only a few years later, the Saturday Evening Post printed an article decrying the weaknesses of the sheriff as a law enforcement official; the article was entitled:``The twilight of the sheriff'' (Detzer, 1934).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Missouri State Highway Patrol as a representative model

Falcone

2001

Policing: An International Journal of Police Strategies &Amp; Management

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Using a socio‐historical analytical approach, explains the emergence and evolutionary iterations of the Missouri State Highway Patrol (MSHP) as it developed into a virtual state police organization. The legal history of the MSHP is chronicled, and the cultural opposition to a state police department in Missouri is explained. Despite the show‐me states’ long‐standing opposition to state‐level policing authority, the evolution of the MSHP into a state‐police‐like organization is developed as a model that is representative of numerous other state‐level police organizations across the nation. The evolutionary patterns in the development of the MSHP are foreshadowed by other state‐level police organizations, like the Illinois State Police.

show abstract

There's (rarely) a new sheriff in town: The incumbency advantage for local law enforcement

Zoorob¹

2022

Electoral Studies

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The Sheriff and the Constable

Cited by 6 publications

References 0 publications

The Rise (and Fall) of Elected Sheriffs

The Rise (and Fall) of Elected Sheriffs

The Missouri State Highway Patrol as a representative model

There's (rarely) a new sheriff in town: The incumbency advantage for local law enforcement

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About