Crisis and Control explains how neoliberal shifts in political and economic systems are militarizing the policing of protest. The book offers a way to understand the influence of political processes on police practices and provides an empirical study of militarized protest policing from 1995 until the present.

Lesley J. Wood shows how protest policing techniques have become more militarised and more dependent on intelligence gathering over the past fifteen years partly as a result of the neoliberal restructuring political, economic and social processes. On an increasingly integrated and tumultuous globe, new militarized technologies, formations and frameworks are diffusing quickly through policing networks.

Crisis and Control uses novel theoretical and methodological approaches and a unique range of empirical data to make an important and radical contribution to a growing field.

Lesley J. Wood is Associate Professor of Sociology at York University in Toronto, Canada. She is the author of Direct Action, Deliberation and Diffusion: Collective Protest After the WTO Protests in Seattle and co-author of the third edition of Social Movements 1768–2012 (Paradigm Publishers) with the late Charles Tilly.

Lesley Wood's profile page

Crisis and Control makes a significant contribution to our understanding of police responses to public protests. Wood challenges the reader to set aside personal politics and examine the broader roles and functions of police, and how these are often at odds with the goal of free speech manifested through peaceful protests. It is a fascinating book, particularly interesting for its analysis of the diffusion of ideas and tactics within and among police forces and the broader evolution of police use of less than lethal weapons.

<p>Canadian Military History Journal</p>

A powerful dissection of the ways that the policing of protests have been transformed over the last decade.

<p>The Bullet</p>