Undercover: Police Surveillance in America (20th Century Fund)

Providing a rich picture of past and present undercover work, and drawing on unpublished documents and interviews with the FBI and local police, this penetrating study examines the variety of undercover operations and the ethical issues and empirical assumptions raised when the state officially sanctions deception and trickery and allows its agents to participate in crime.

This is the most comprehensive and thoughtful work ever done on undercover policing. It will be the benchmark by which all further scholarship in this area will be judged.—Jerome Skolnick, University of California, Berkeley, School of Law

If you believe in undercover tactics, this book will warn you. If you are opposed to covert activities by the police, this excellent study will force you to rethink your position. . . . Undercover is indispensable for anyone who wants to understand the threat, but also the usefulness, of surveillance by law enforcement officials.—R. Drinan, Georgetown University

Gary Marx's book is one of the best of the rare species, thoughtful and analytic books about police surveillance. He has a thousand stories, most of them current . . . and he makes a solid study out of them. He has written a sociological map for surveillance, giving it a structure that it has never before had.—P. Chevigny, New York University

This is the best single treatment of the problem of undercover investigations in our literature. Gary Marx writes not only with erudition and sensitivity, he is a very sensible man as well. He has mastered a vast amount of detail while not losing sight of the big picture. I cannot praise this book too highly.—J. Kaplan, Stanford University

A tour de force on a very difficult subject. . . . This is an important, needed, well-executed book. It will be widely read and used.—D. Bayley, State University of New York, Albany

A remarkable success at weaving legal and sociological factors in an otherwise controversial and seemingly irreconcilable interplay of disciplines.—J. Wilczynski, Prosecutor's Brief

A wonderful book!—Professor Arthur Miller, C-NBC Live

Deserves a wide audience beyond practitioners and scholars.—A. Bouza, Chief of Police, Minneapolis

T. Reppetto

A well researched survey of the field with a carefully reasoned analysis of some of the central questions undercover operations present...for individuals who are serious students of their profession, this is an important addition to their literature. -- Law Enforcement News

Examines the current use of undercover police officers, discusses its implications about American society, and describes how modern undercover operations have changed from those of the past.