Why is the police role so broad in the United States today? Carceral state scholars have investigated how and why policymakers have treated so many social problems as policing problems, but they have not yet recognized the degree to which the call-for-service system has marginalized political control over police strategy. This Article traces the historical sources of this arrangement through extensive archival research into its evolution. We find that over the course of the twentieth century, the rise of new communications technologies gradually shifted the power to decide which problems are proper subjects of police attention to private individuals, eventually channeling their demands through centralized call centers that had been stripped of the authority and contextual knowledge needed to govern them in a meaningful way. That process fundamentally altered the character of public oversight over policing, elevating a distinctive set of individual interests as largely unchallenged determinants of the kinds of situations that are policeable. By illustrating how sociotechnical change unintentionally reallocated the authority to define the scope of an important institution’s mandate, this case sheds new light on the factors that shape the police role and the role the public plays in defining it.

中文翻译：

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公众如何成为呼叫者：反应性警务的出现，1880-1970

为什么当今美国警察的角色如此广泛？监狱国家学者研究了政策制定者如何以及为何将如此多的社会问题视为治安问题，但他们尚未认识到呼叫服务系统在多大程度上边缘化了对警察策略的政治控制。本文通过对其演变的广泛档案研究，追溯了这种安排的历史根源。我们发现，在二十世纪的过程中，新通信技术的兴起逐渐将决定哪些问题是警察关注的适当主题的权力转移给了私人，最终通过被剥夺了权力的集中式呼叫中心来传达他们的要求以及以有意义的方式管理它们所需的上下文知识。这一过程从根本上改变了公众对警务监督的性质，将一系列独特的个人利益提升为可警务情况的基本不受挑战的决定因素。通过说明社会技术变革如何无意中重新分配权力来定义重要机构的职责范围，该案例为塑造警察角色的因素以及公众在定义警察角色时所扮演的角色提供了新的线索。