Micol Seigel

This project examines up to a dozen municipal police archives across the United States in order to analyze US policing during the cold war, a subject historians have neglected. This innovative study attends to the ways police work crosses US borders, toes the line between military and civil action, and links to other pieces of the criminal justice system, particularly prisons. Drawing on interdisciplinary bodies of secondary literature and in-depth archival research, it applies a transnational framework that uncovers the global currents flowing through postwar police practice, revealing otherwise invisible aspects of the criminal justice system.