Bodies of Evidence: Modern Policing, Sex, and the Intricacies of Authorized Crime and Deception

Bodies Series, Episode #3 of 4. While police investigations have adapted to new technologies, the basic premises of investigative police work have been pretty consistent since the 1880s in the UK, Ireland, and the US. But that does not mean that the philosophical and procedural organization of modern policing have not or cannot undergo revision or reform. For example, the ways that these national policing organizations dealt with same-sex sex when homosexuality was illegal shifted significantly over time . The Irish police -- or Garda -- had a multitude of tactics for catching men having sex with men. One of the most controversial was when they used agents provocateur, men who used their own bodies as bait for same-sex desiring men. This was a tactic employed first in 1927, and then dropped completely by 1936. Why? Today we’ll contemplate that question while thinking about authorized deception, authorized crime, and incitement to crime in the modern policing of sex. 

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Bibliography

Paul Bleakley, “Fish in a Barrel: Police Targeting of Brisbane’s Ephemeral Gay Spaces in the Pre- Decriminalization Era,” Journal of Homosexuality, 68:6, (2021) 1037-1058.

Vicky Bungaya, Michael Halpina, Chris Atchisonb and Caitlin Johnston, “Structure and agency: reflections from an exploratory study of Vancouver indoor sex workers,” Culture, Health & Sexuality, Vol. 13, No. 1, (January 2011) 15–29

Vicky Conway, Policing Twentieth Century Ireland (Routledge Press, 2013).

Derek Dalton, “Policing Outlawed Desire: ‘homocriminality’ In Beat Spaces In Australia,” Law Critique (2007) 18:375–405.

Morgan Denton, “Open Secrets: Prostitution and National Identity in Twentieth-Century Irish Society,” (State University of New York at Buffalo Dissertations, 2012).

Lyle Dick, “The Queer Frontier: Male Same-sex Experience in Western Canada’s Settlement Era,” Journal of Canadian Studies/Revue d'études canadiennes, 48:1 (Winter 2014) 15-52

Gregory Feldman, ““With my head on the pillow”: Sovereignty, Ethics, and Evil among Undercover Police Investigators,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 58(2) (2016) 491–518.

Angela Fritz, “‘I was a Sociological Stranger’: Ethnographic Fieldwork and Undercover Performance in the Publication of The Taxi-Dance Hall, 1925–1932,” Gender & History, Vol.30 No.1 (March 2018) 131–152.

LaShawn Denise Harris, ““Women and Girls in Jeopardy by His False Testimony”: Charles Dancy, Urban Policing, and Black Women in New York City during the 1920s,” Journal of Urban History, Vol. 44(3) (2018) 457-475

Louise A. Jackson, Women police: Gender, welfare and surveillance in the twentieth century. (Manchester University Press, 2006).

Gary Potter, “The History of Policing in the United States, Part 1,” Eastern Kentucky University Police Studies Online

Gary Marx, Police Surveillance in America, (University of California Press, 1988)

Brendon Murphy, “Deceptive apparatus: Foucauldian perspectives on law, authorised crime and the rationalities of undercover investigation,” Griffith Law Review, 25:2 (2016), 223-244.

William Peniston, Pederasts and others: urban culture and sexual identity in nineteenth century Paris, (New York: Harrington Park Press, 2004) 25-26

Michel Rey, “Parisian Homosexuals Create a Lifestyle, 1700-1750: The Police Archives," in Tis Nature's Fault: Unauthorized Sexuality during the Enlightenment, ed. Robbert Purks MacCubbin (Cambridge, 1987), pp. 179-91.

Stephen Robertson, “Harlem Undercover: Vice Investigators, Race, and Prostitution, 1910-1930,” Journal of Urban History, 35: 4 (May 2009) 486-504.

Philip Matthew Stinson, Sr., John Liederbach, Steven P. Lab, and Steven L. Brewer, Jr., “Police Integrity Lost: A Study of Law Enforcement Officers Arrested,” Final technical report, April 2016 https://www.ojp.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/249850.pdf

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