July 30, 2025

Police Reform and the Dismantling of Legal Estrangement

070820-56-Police-Law-Enforcement
Police Reform and the Dismantling of Legal Estrangement

Police Reform and the Dismantling of Legal Estrangement
When police are armed and clad in riot gear, they may see themselves more as warriors battling an enemy than as guardians protecting a community. / Photo by Becker1999, Wikimedia Commons

Legal estrangement speaks to detachment and eventual alienation from the law’s enforcers.


Police Reform and the Dismantling of Legal Estrangement

By Dr. Monica C. Bell, J.D.
Associate Professor of Law and Associate Professor of Sociology
Yale University


070820-57-Police-Law-Enforcement


Originally published by the Yale Law Journal, 2017, free and open access, republished for educational, non-commercial purposes.