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Patterns of Promotion

The St. Louis Police Department, 1899–1975

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 January 2016

Eugene J. Watts
Eugene J. Watts*
Affiliation:
Ohio State University
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Extract

Throughout the early decades of this century, reformers bemoaned the unsystematic nature of police management, reserving particular criticism for the influence of nonbureaucratic and nonmeritocratic matters on promotions. Their advocacy of greater routinization and regularity, cloaked in the rhetoric of professionalism, eventually won acceptance in formal police administration. Few proponents of change, however, measured the consequences of their efforts upon the actual careers of officers (Fosdick, 1972; Vollmer, 1972; Smith, 1940; Wilson and McLaren, 1950; Price, 1977).

Type
Research Note
Information
Social Science History , Volume 6 , Issue 2 , Spring 1982 , pp. 233 - 258
Copyright
Copyright © Social Science History Association 1982 

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