Serve and Protect
Selected Essays on Just Policing
Foreword by Todd Whitmore
Imprint: Cascade Books
This collection of essays on policing and the use of force, while written over the course of the last twenty-five years, remains relevant and timely. Although issues in policing and questions about excessive force and brutality have been addressed by criminologists, sociologists, philosophers, and criminal justice ethicists, only a handful of theological ethicists treat this pressing matter. While the Christian moral tradition has a voluminous record of theological attention to violence and nonviolence, war and peace, there is a dearth of references to policing. And most considerations of criminal justice issues by Christians and their churches concentrate on prison reform, or abolition, and the death penalty, but not policing. These essays, authored by a theological ethicist possessing professional experience in law enforcement, seek to fill this curious gap. They offer a framework for moral reasoning concerning the justification for police use of force and the just application of such force, and they propose just policing as a model that is consonant with promoting a just peace in communities and society. In addition, they explore the implications of such an approach for wider, international questions about just war, terrorism, the responsibility to protect, and post-war justice.
Tobias Winright is Associate Professor of Theological Ethics and Associate Professor of Health Care Ethics at Saint Louis University. Among his publications, he coauthored After the Smoke Clears: The Just War Tradition and Post War Justice (2010), edited Green Discipleship: Catholic Theological Ethics and the Environment (2011), and coedited Can War Be Just in the 21st Century? Ethicists Engage the Tradition (2015). He was also coeditor of the Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics.
“Winright’s longstanding experience and expertise in policing are here brought together in a volume that could not be more timely. His take-down of police ‘militarization’ in favor of a community policing model will speak to all who have been outraged and alarmed at recent police killings of unarmed Black people, or at threats of military-grade violence against antiracism protesters. This book will bring insight to scholars, while catalyzing lively classroom discussions.”
—Lisa Sowle Cahill, J. Donald Monan, SJ, Professor of Theology, Boston College
“As recent events have shown, the most urgent question in American social ethics today pertains to police actions. With his background in law enforcement and extensive academic training, Tobias Winright has emerged as the most insightful and compelling voice in Christian ethics on questions of just policing in our racially divided and unjust society.”
—Cathleen Kaveny, Darald and Juliet Libby Professor of Law and Theology, Boston College
“The writing of Toby Winright is always worth reading, but this volume is especially so. Drawing upon his experience in law enforcement as well as his scholarship in Christian ethics, he has provided a collection of essays that are significant both for their timeliness and insight.”
—Kenneth R. Himes, OFM, Professor of Theology, Boston College
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