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Book Cover
E-book
Author Lvovsky, Anna, author.

Title Vice patrol : cops, courts, and the struggle over urban gay life before Stonewall / Anna Lvovsky
Published Chicago : University of Chicago Press, [2021]
©2021

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Description 1 online resource (337 pages) : illustrations
Contents When anyone can tell -- Expert witnesses on trial -- Plainclothes decoys and the limits of criminal justice -- The rise of ethnographic policing -- Peepholes and perverts -- The popular press and the gay world -- Epilogue
Summary Chronicles how local police and criminal justice systems intruded on gay individuals, criminalizing, profiling, surveilling, and prosecuting them from the 1930's through the 1960's. Anna Lvovsky details the progression of enforcement strategies through the targeting of gay-friendly bars by liquor boards, enticement of sexual overtures by plainclothes police decoys, and surveilling of public bathrooms via peepholes and two-way mirrors to catch someone "in the act." Lvovsky shows how the use of tactics indistinguishable from entrapment to criminalize homosexual men in public and private spaces produced charges brought forward and disputed by attorneys and evidence that had to stand before judges, who at times intervened against punitive policies. In Vice Patrol the author demonstrates how developments in the psychological, medical, and sociological handling of homosexuality filtered into police stations, courthouses, and the wider culture
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index
Notes Description based upon print version of record
Subject Male homosexuality -- United States -- History -- 20th century
Gay people -- Legal status, laws, etc. -- United States
Vice control -- United States -- History -- 20th century
Law enforcement -- United States -- History -- 20th century
Criminal justice, Administration of -- United States -- History -- 20th century
LAW / General.
Criminal justice, Administration of
Gays -- Legal status, laws, etc.
Law enforcement
Male homosexuality
Vice control
United States
Genre/Form History
Form Electronic book
LC no. 2020045745
ISBN 9780226769813
022676981X
Other Titles Cops, courts, and the struggle over urban gay life before Stonewall