Perspectives on the Legal Order: The Capacity for Social Control

This research focuses on the size of municipal crime-control bureaucracies-police departments. The consensus perspectives assumes that the legal order reflects social consensus and that the size of crime control bureaucracies is a response to reported infractions of that order (reported crime rates). The conflict perspectives assumes that the legal order reflects the interests of the powerful and that the size of crime-control bureaucracies is a response to perceived threats to such interests. Work by Turk and Blauner suggests that the size of crime-control bureaucracies reflects the relative size of groups dissimilar to authorities and the extent to which such groups are segregated. The above perspectives are tested for 109 U.S. municipal police departments from 1950 to 1972. Empirical support for the conflict perspective is strongest (1) in the South and (2) after the civil disorders of the 1960s.