Purchase Sisters of the Academy

Examines the perspectives of inner-city residents in Athens, Georgia on policing, community policing, and the co-production of law enforcement.

Assessing citizen satisfaction with local governmental services and their delivery and distribution is essential in evaluating, restructuring, and implementing effective governmental policies. Citizen evaluations provide public officials with important clues about the perceived performance of local agencies, an important factor in inner-city areas where residents have expressed considerable dissatisfaction with the delivery of police services. This book examines the perspectives of inner-city residents in Athens, Georgia and focuses on policing, community policing, and the co-production of law enforcement.

A qualitative, non-experimental research design with focus group interviewing is used to collect, explore, and examine the perceptions and attitudes of East Athens residence and community policing officers. The focus group technique enables the researchers to gather in-depth data on the expectations of these inner-city residents and the implications for public administrations serving this community. The results of this study examine not only the police service delivery and community policing effort in question, but also more general efforts of implementation and evaluation of public policies.

"The author provides insight into the most important aspect of community oriented policing. Specifically, he notes and shows that citizen support is a necessary component in the co-production of public services to neighborhood residents. This is an outstanding book. It deals with a topic relevant to communities and police departments across the country." -- Wilson Edward Reed, Texas Christian University

Retention of African Americans on campus is a burning issue for the black community, and a moral and financial one for predominantly white institutions of higher education. This book offers fresh insights and new strategies developed by fifteen scholars concerned by the new climate in which affirmative action is being challenged and eliminated.

This is the first book devoted specifically to retention of African Americans in higher education, and is unique in addressing the distinct but inter-related concerns of all three affected constituencies: students, faculty and administrators. Each is considered in a separate section.

Despite their qualifications and talent, most African American Ph.D.s and faculty experience unspoken challenges in their lives on campus, and barriers to advancement in their careers in higher education. 

This book aims to open a conversation about equity, and about creating productive work environments and community that is rarely heard in the halls of predominantly white colleges and universities. Lee Jones offers a starting point for that conversation by drawing together historical accounts, interviews, research and analysis. 

Part motivational, part guidance for African Americans faculty and doctoral students, this book has much to say of relevance members of other under represented populations. Its insights and recommendations should command the attention of leaders in higher education. 

Lee Jones both addresses the measurable facts and the surface issues – such as the decline in the number of Ph.D.s awarded to African Americans and the dismantling of affirmative action programs – and probes beneath them to look at the unspoken realities.  Along the way he examines the GRE and the studies that allege its inherent bias.

The book opens with an account of the first black student to graduate from an American university with a Ph.D. and goes on to present case studies of African Americans who have succeeded in their academic careers. The book concludes by offering survival techniques for aspiring Ph.D.s; and mapping out the politics that young faculty have to consider, and the strategies they need to adopt, as they set out on careers in a climate that more often than not places demoralizing barriers in their way.