The UW Law Library is thrilled to announce the launch of a new repository collection: the Herman Goldstein & Problem-Oriented Policing Collection. Longtime UW Law professor, Goldstein was an international leader in policing and criminology and is credited with introducing more just and effective strategies for police to carry out their duties.
Goldstein’s work covered the most important aspects of policing in democratic societies: the broad nature of the police function, political accountability of the police, the exercise and control of police discretion, the control of police misconduct, the many dimensions of police administration that affect police effectiveness and fairness, and, ultimately, his comprehensive proposal for improving policing through a problem-oriented approach.
For his contributions to the field of modern policing, Goldstein received the 2018 Stockholm Prize in Criminology, an international award that has been called the Nobel Prize of criminology. His writings, including the books Problem-Oriented Policing, first published in 1990 and republished in 2015, and Policing a Free Society, continue to find new readers.
The Herman Goldstein & Problem-Oriented Policing Collection contains over 850 historic documents from his personal collection, including many items related to his work with the Chicago Police Department in the early 1960s and his creation of the concept of problem-oriented policing. In addition, the Law Library has also made an 8+ hour oral history with Goldstein and a comprehensive, full-text collection of his scholarship is available through the UW Law School Digital Repository.
For more information about Goldstein and the collection, see also the UW Law School news article, Good as Gold(stein): Highlighting the UW Law Repository’s Newest Collection.