Pollard Memorial Library (Lowell)

Vice patrol, cops, courts, and the struggle over urban gay life before Stonewall, Anna Lvovsky

eng

Includes bibliographical references (pages 273-326) and index

illustrations

index present

non fiction

Vice patrol

bibliography

1199329004

Anna Lvovsky

cops, courts, and the struggle over urban gay life before Stonewall

"Vice Patrol: Cops, Courts, and the Struggle over Urban Gay Life 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"--, Provided by publisher

Cops, courts, and the struggle over urban gay life before Stonewall