AHA Session 75
Saturday, January 4, 2025: 8:30 AM-10:00 AM
Clinton Room (New York Hilton, Second Floor)
Chair:
J. Marlena Edwards, Penn State University
Papers:
Comment:
Shannon King, Fairfield University
Session Abstract
This panel session introduces the Upstate New York Policing Research Consortium (UNY-PRC), a part of Binghamton University’s Human Rights Institute, that explores current policing practices in a historical and structural context. Our interdisciplinary team of historians and social scientists aims to advance both the academic and public understanding of policing, embracing debates on abolition and criminal justice mechanisms. Our purposes include: fostering public and civic engagement and oversight of policing policies and practices, as well as partnering with community stakeholders to facilitate improvements. Located in upstate New York, the consortium currently operates in Binghamton and Rochester, with plans to grow into Albany, Buffalo and Syracuse later this year. As such, our papers explore historical events and narratives around policing, interdisciplinary strategies for analyzing historical trends in policing, specifically a partnership with software engineers to create artificial intelligence that can code and assess thousands of police “use of force” narrative reports (and other such data) expediently, and the creation of global partnerships with historians and scholars from around the world. In short, these papers examine the tangible publication examples of our research consortium, the strategies employed to improve both quantitative and qualitative historical analysis of policing practices and an example of how we leverage partnerships across the world to ensure that our specificity (upstate New York) is in direct conversation with national and global historiographies and practices.
See more of: AHA Sessions