The Minneapolis Reckoning: Race, Violence, and the Politics of Policing in America (Princeton UP, 2024)
Michelle Phelps (Author)
APRIL 26, 2024 
Noon Reception
12:30 p.m. Lecture
509 O’Brian Hall, North Campus 
Attend in-person or via Zoom.
Abstract: In the summer of 2020, the city of Minneapolis Police Department (MPD) became a national emblem of both the persistence of racialized police violence and the failures of liberal police reform. Thrust into the national spotlight, city leaders pledged to “end” the MPD. Yet as The Minneapolis Reckoning traces, nearly four years later, the MPD remains intact, protected by the complex racial politics of policing that position the MPD as both the cause and solution to the problem of violence.

At the same time, Minneapolis’ residents and leaders have fought aggressively for new models of public safety, including alternative emergency response and violence prevention systems, transforming the city. Phelps' talk will consider both the failures and wins of the radical demands of 2020 to better understand the possibilities and limits of challenging police power today.

New from Princeton: preview the book here.

Author Bio: I am an Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Minnesota. My research is in the sociology of punishment, focusing in particular on the punitive turn in the U.S. through the lenses of policing, probation, and prisons. Recent work from these projects has been published in interdisciplinary peer-reviewed journals, including American Journal of Sociology (Phelps, Robertson, & Powell 2021), Sociology of Race & Ethnicity (Phelps & Hamilton 2021), Social Problems (Phelps & Ruhland 2022),  Mobilization (Phelps, Ward, & Frazier 2021), Law & Society Review (Powell & Phelps 2021), Law & Social Inquiry (Piehowski & Phelps 2023), and Annual Review of Criminology (Phelps 2020).* 

Together with Philip Goodman (University of Toronto) and Joshua Page (University of Minnesota), I am the author of Breaking the Pendulum: The Long Struggle Over Criminal Justice (Oxford, 2017), which traces the history of U.S. criminal justice reforms from the birth of the penitentiary to contemporary struggles to end mass incarceration. My second book, The Minneapolis Reckoning: Race, Violence, and the Politics of Policing in America, will come out in May 2024. To learn more, visit personal website.