In the mid-twentieth century, gay life flourished in American cities even as the state repression of queer communities reached its peak. Liquor investigators infiltrated and shut down gay-friendly bars. Plainclothes decoys enticed men in parks and clubs. Vice officers surveilled public bathrooms through peepholes and two-way mirrors.
 
In Vice Patrol, Anna Lvovsky chronicles this painful story, tracing the tactics used to criminalize, profile, and suppress gay life from the 1930s through the 1960s, and the surprising controversies those tactics often inspired in court. Lvovsky shows that the vice squads’ campaigns stood at the center of live debates about not only the law’s treatment of queer people, but also the limits of ethical policing, the authority of experts, and the nature of sexual difference itself—debates that had often unexpected effects on the gay community’s rights and freedoms. Examining those battles, Vice Patrol enriches understandings of the regulation of queer life in the twentieth century and disputes about police power that continue today.

"Lvovsky has written an important history of antigay policing in the US between 1930 and 1970. . . . Lvovsky dives into municipal archives, court records, and psychological literature to interrogate queer tropes, taking care to guide readers through this narrative. . . . Lvovsky deftly handles these topics with nuance and compassion. Those studying law, history, gender and sexuality, and political science will benefit from her work in terms of understanding queer life in the 20th century, the professionalization of policing, and how the two intersected to shape (mis)understandings about the other. This is a necessary title for all libraries at all levels. . . . Essential." - Choice

"Anna Lvovsky’s Vice Patrol: Cops, Courts, and the Struggle over Urban Gay Life before Stonewall offers an exciting, novel contribution to the fast-growing field of police history in the United States. . . . Vice Patrol reshapes our understanding of the state’s regulation of gay life, and it complicates long-held assumptions about the relationship between police knowledge and police power." - American Journal of Legal History

"With precise details and careful analysis, Vice Patrol tells a fascinating story about how the policing of homosexuality from the 1940s to the 1960s was far more contradictory and contested than we might think, and how courts of law played a crucial role in the emerging understanding and visibility of LGBT life." - The Gay & Lesbian Review Worldwide

"In Vice Patrol: Cops, Courts, and the Struggle Over Urban Gay Life Before Stonewall, Anna Lvovsky examines with both precision and breadth a time period during which litigants in queer society encountered considerably greater difficulty in the justice system... This important book casts new light on the legal intricacies and political realities of anti-gay legislation several generations before courts began looking with disfavor on laws stigmatizing or even criminalizing members of the queer community." - Criminal Law and Criminal Justice Books

"Lvovsky chronicles the tactics used to criminalize, profile, and suppress gay life in the US from the1930s through the 1960s, and the surprising controversies those tactics often inspired in court. She finds that the vice squads’ campaigns stood at the center of debates about not only the law’s treatment of queer people, but also the limits of ethical policing, the authority of experts, and the nature of sexual difference itself—debates that had often unexpected effects on the LGBTQ community’s civil liberties, and that continue to be relevant today." - Law & Social Inquiry

"In her stunning new book, Vice Patrol, Anna Lvovsky argues that, in the United States, the criminal justice system was disjointed on the subject of homosexuality and how it should be policed. . . In an elegantly written examination of state liquor boards, courts and police, Lvovsky demonstrates that individual agents and agencies of the criminal justice system, alongside same-sex desiring people and ‘experts’, shaped and reshaped the public and legal concept of the ‘homosexual.'" - Journal of Urban History

"In this sophisticated and original work, Anna Lvovsky interrogates the policing of queer sexual and cultural expression in the United States from the 1930s through the 1960s. . . This textured and innovative study will interest legal and urban historians and scholars of gender and sexuality in the United States." - Journal of American History

"In Vice Patrol: Cops, Courts, and the Struggle over Urban Gay Life before Stonewall, Anna Lvovsky tackles a topic—the history of police abuses of queer people and spaces—that historians have long documented and gives it an impressive new spin. Histories of LGBTQ experience in particular cities, for example, always include significant attention to these anti-LGBTQ policing practices. Lvovsky, however, turns this topic on its head by approaching the issue from the perspective of the state regulatory, police, and judicial systems. . . . Lvovsky has produced a work of impressive and fascinating scholarship. . ." - Contemporary Sociology

"Vice Patrol offers powerful lessons for today’s civil rights battles, both in the courts and online. The book uses a case study of state enforcement of anti-vice laws against gay people to tell a larger story about an epistemological struggle over facts and knowledge, as well as the limits, if any, they place on power." - Michigan Law Review

"Visibility is the clarion call of LGBT politics, but Vice Patrol scrambles the signal. Lvovsky takes familiar moments of gay visibility as her starting point, showing how media attention hardened stereotypes about gay culture. Those stereotypes had a curious afterlife in the legal system, leading to 'epistemic gaps' between enforcement institutions. . . . By elaborating on this process, Lvovsky reveals the 'regulatory underside' to gay cultural visibility. . . [and] brings new insight to a question that has puzzled scholars across several fields: Why and how does cultural representation lead to increased state repression?" - The University of Chicago Law Review

"Lvovsky’s sophisticated approach paints a complex portrait of the state apparatus aimed at regulating queer spaces . . . [Vice Patrol is] a crucial contribution to the scholarly literatures on LGBT communities and policing more generally. I expect it will be useful in part or in whole in courses for instructors in a wide range of disciplines, including history; women’s, gender, and sexuality studies; criminology; and sociology." - Journal of the History of Sexuality