Fans pick 100 books like The Psychology of Police Deadly Force Encounters

Professor Elizabeth Loftus essentially launched the modern field of eyewitness studies with her experiments on the dynamics of human memory in the eyewitness context, and this book discusses her most important experiments, major studies which reinvigorated this important field.

She demonstrated that memory can be reconfigured in the presence of post-event information, to the degree that a given eyewitness memory may bear no resemblance to the actual events supposedly being remembered.

This is among the most important books in forensic cognitive science, the psychological basis of law enforcement, and the criminal justice system.

Loftus began the studies which culminated in my own book. Her work focused on eyewitness memory, but has implications far beyond that realm in more modern research.

The dynamics she identified operate in realms as disparate as officer-involved shootings, training for the detection of terrorist bombs, and even beliefs in paranormal phenomena and "sightings" of such… show more.

This 1932 work by Bartlett demonstrates many of the dynamics that Loftus would later use to conceptualize eyewitness memory, and that many scholars in law enforcement psychology, including myself, use on an everyday basis.

Bartlett showed that memories are not static representations of reality, admittedly with occasional lapses into forgetting.

Rather, in both the visual and verbal realms, Bartlett demonstrated that memories become abbreviated, operate in the direction of core or gist, and may be completely reconfigured in the direction of personal belief.

This work demonstrates strongly the fragility of human perception, memory, and the thought which derives from these more basic processes, and shows us how difficult it may be to develop vertical accounts of actual crimes in investigative and courtroom settings.

Colonel Grossman's work, with Loren Christensen, discusses, in practical if sometimes harsh terms, the realities of psychology in combat, hard realities encountered by military personnel and by law enforcement officers. 

This is a critical work for anyone interested in the realities of the human mind in battle, and especially for those mental health personnel who may have to deal with the harsh realities of violence in mental health settings without personal experience or personal understanding of the field realities of combat and violence.

This book should be required reading for anyone dealing with military or law enforcement personnel in the mental health realm.

We know from the work of Bartlett and Loftus that memory is malleable, changing in the directions of gist, brevity, and personal belief. 

This book provides a more modern academic view of these phenomena, demonstrating why eyewitness memory, and other aspects of memory such as those involved in combat situations and officer-involved shootings, may be entirely inaccurate without any ill will or prevarication on the part of the given witness.

Not an easy read, but an important one for those who wish to have a full understanding of memory in the criminal justice system.

While Silverstein is most known for his wonderful compendium of poetry, Where The Sidewalk Ends, this was one of my favorite books as a child (and my sister’s too). Yes, it’s written for kids, but it’s still a great read as an adult, laugh-out-loud funny – and ultimately, very affecting. As you may have deduced from the title, it’s about a lion who figures out how to shoot back to defend himself and his pride against hunters – which then sparks an extremely inventive and surprising journey. Plus, it is deftly illustrated by Silverstein as well.

An astonishing well-researched and detailed analysis of the arms trade and the omnipresence of guns in the world today. Full of startling and worrying statistics, for example, that there are 12 billion bullets produced every year which kill at least 500,000 people. The book reveals how in some places it is easier to get a gun than to get a glass of water. Solo killers, the military, the hunters, the paranoid suburban Americans, they are all here, and it is not a pretty picture.

Rather than reprising hackneyed debates between the usual political actors—for example, gun control liberals versus gun rights libertarians—this book argues that American ‘gun culture’ was never really about hunting, freedom fighters, the militia, or constitutional liberty in the first place. From the country’s inception, Dunbar-Ortiz describes, guns were about racial subjugation, the genocide of Native Americans, the enforcement of enslavement, and the privileges and wealth that flowed from this subordination to the dominating class.

For Dunbar-Ortiz, the use of guns for subjugation and the expropriation of labor, land, and wealth from non-white populations wasn’t lamentably incidental to the American gun culture but at its very heart. I especially appreciate how the author shifts the terrain of the gun discussion: This book left me wondering if we spend too much time thinking about what guns have meant in the abstract and too little about what guns have done in the specific—the… show more.

I admire this book for its measured erudition on a topic (guns) that the author feels is the most formative cultural chasm in the US. Winkler, a renowned legal scholar, uses the 2008 Supreme Court Heller decision that enshrined the second amendment as an individual right to bear arms as the touchstone for a riveting and more wide-ranging investigation of the history of gun rights as well as gun control laws. Winkler finds historical precedents for the concept of an individual right (if not a mandate, in some cases) to bear arms.

However, what I found most surprising is Winkler’s account of the equally sturdy and deeply-rooted history of gun control and regulation. This revises the popular wisdom that gun control, essentially, has no history—that the US was a land of unfettered gun-toting and gun-owning that was only later thwarted by modern, liberal gun restrictions. On the contrary, by the… show more.

Repeal the Second Amendment is a highly engaging book that makes the case for amending the Constitution in order to facilitate gun law reform.

Lichtman shows that gun controls were in place from the early days of the Republic and that the Second Amendment to the Constitution referred to the “right to keep and bear arms” within the context of militia service only. This right did not apply to an individual right to bear arms. In the 1800s many states prohibited the carrying of guns.

Lichtman provides a path forward to repealing the Second Amendment and addresses skeptics who claim that such an undertaking is a fool’s errand.

Private Guns, Public Health is a comprehensive, evidence-based review of research on the link between gun availability and mortality.

The book explains why policies are urgently needed to address America’s gun violence problem. Hemenway makes the case for a public health approach to gun violence prevention, as opposed to a reactive punitive approach anchored in the criminal justice system. It is not about banning guns but preventing violence in the same way that research-based practices led to dramatic reductions in fatalities arising from car accidents.

Measures supported by Hemenway include safe storage practices, addressing the mental health of the public, encouraging Hollywood to promote responsible gun ownership, preventing gun theft through safe shipping practices, regulating guns as a consumer product, and ensuring that all gun sales proceed through licensed dealers.