The New Centurions is a 1972 American Panavision neo-noir action crime film based on the 1971 novel of the same name by author and policeman Joseph Wambaugh.

Joseph Aloysius Wambaugh, Jr. is a best-selling American writer known for his fictional and nonfictional accounts of police work in the United States. Many of his novels are set in Los Angeles and its surroundings and feature Los Angeles police officers as protagonists. He won three Edgar Awards, and was named a Grand Master by the Mystery Writers of America.