Development of the Police Force

12 Key excerpts on "Development of the Police Force"

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  eBook - ePub

  Criminal Justice Theory

  An Introduction

  • Roger Hopkins Burke(Author)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Marx (2001) observes that it is an ongoing common myth that it is only the police force or service that stands between total chaos and social order in a democratic society. Social order has multiple sources which include socialisation to norms, a desire to have others think well of us, reciprocity, self-defence and the design of the physical environment. He nevertheless acknowledges that the police are an important factor with their significance increasing with the heterogeneity and size of a society as well as with the more recent globalisation. A defining characteristic of the police is their mandate to legally use force and to deprive citizens of their liberty and we might observe that this power is bound to generate opposition from those who are subject to it and it also offers great temptations for police abuse and maltreatment on behalf of the authorities controlling them. Thus, law enforcement in modern democratic societies requires a delicate balancing act between ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ strategies, as we will observe later in this chapter.

  The meaning of the word ‘police’ has changed over the past five centuries and has its origins in the term ‘polity’ which means the form of government of a political body. In Europe in the fifteenth century it referred broadly to matters involving life, health and property and there was no distinct police force or service. Policing was done intermittently by the military, and society was largely ‘unpoliced’ except at a very local community level. It was with the formation of modern states with clear national borders, beginning in the eighteenth century, that the term police began to refer to the specific functions of crime prevention and order maintenance. It was then only a small step to identify the word police with the personnel (Johnson, 1992). With the expansion of the law over the next several centuries, police also came to be increasingly concerned with the prevention of public dangers such as crime and disorder and the prevention or redress of breaches of law. They also themselves came to be more controlled by the law (Lane, 1967; Critchley, 1978; Fogelson, 1977).

  The above discourse can be very much located in the context of the social progress model of criminal justice development. Thus from this orthodox perspective the modern police service developed in response to progressive benevolent and humanitarian concerns in a complex, changing, albeit significantly challenging society, but ultimately in the interests of all its citizens. This chapter will show that the reality has been both more ambiguous and complex, and will be divided into four parts. First, we will consider the incremental development of policing from its origins in pre-modern society until the twenty-first century. Second, we explore more closely the relationship between policing and contemporary society from the end of the Second World War to the present day. Third, there will be a discussion of significant policing issues in contemporary society. Fourth, there will be a brief review of these debates in the context of the four models of criminal justice development.

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  The Criminal Justice System

  An Introduction, Fifth Edition

  • Ronald J. Waldron, Chester L. Quarles, David H. McElreath, Michelle E. Waldron, David Ethan Milstein(Authors)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  CHAPTER FIVE HISTORY AND DEVELOPMENT OF POLICE EARLY POLICING FRENCH POLICE DEVELOPMENT ENGLISH POLICE DEVELOPMENT POLICE DEVELOPMENT IN THE UNITED STATES Purpose: To trace the historical de-velopment of the police and the ori-gins of the American police service. Because historians in general and police histo-rians in particular are restricted to the study of oral and written accounts of the past, our knowl-edge of the development of police services is lim-ited. We just don’t know very much about policing in ancient times. Many of the early laws were recorded on ancient tablets or papyrus that have been carefully preserved in very dry cli-mates, but the enforcement of these codes and the officers who enforced the codes are usually not documented. Since policing is rarely mentioned, it appears that the control of public order and deterrence of crime in ancient times was a private matter. Apparently, law enforcement was first initiated in extended family groups, villages, and what we would today call townships. This form of order maintenance and policing has a patriarchal or an extended family base. Probably, the customs depicted in early cave-dwelling drawings are representative of the beginning of law and polic-ing, 1 a pre-historical account of order mainte-nance. Prior to communities’ initiating some type of watchman system, the individual citizen was re-sponsible for his own protection and that of his primary associates or family group, a form of self-policing . Self-policing existed in one form or another until laws were established making any criminal act a state offense and personnel were provided to enforce the law. EARLY POLICING Prior to the formal development of law, a theft or a violent attack against an individual was ba-sically a tort, or a civil act against an individual.

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  The Police in a Free Society

  Safeguarding Rights While Enforcing the Law

  • Todd Douglas(Author)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Praeger

    (Publisher)

  CHAPTER TWO The Evolution of the Modern Police Force The basic mission for which police exist is to prevent crime and disorder as an alternative to the repression of crime and disorder by military force and severity of legal punishment. —Sir Robert Peel, 1829 In the modern United States, we take the existence of police agencies and the presence of uniformed police officers for granted, something that has always been a part of life in our country. What most people fail to realize is that, historically, even the concept of the nation-state is relatively new, while the development of organized, professional police forces as a means of maintaining order is a much more recent development. After the fall of the Roman Empire in the fifth century, western Europe descended into centuries of darkness and chaos. The few governments were loosely defined kingdoms based upon ethnic and linguistic similari- ties, with little to no administrative infrastructure and no organized group charged with enforcing what few laws existed. Monarchs in the kingdoms of the Visigoths, Burgundians, and the like may have held absolute power in theory, but they had precious little means of exercising that power—for good or ill—on the level of the ordinary peasant, who was left to find his own means of protection from criminals. The map of Europe was drawn and redrawn for centuries into hundreds of large and small kingdoms, duchies, crowns, bishoprics, and principalities. It was during this medieval period, aptly referred to as the Dark Ages, that the system of feudalism emerged. In simplistic terms, feudalism involved peasants combining together under a powerful landowner who would offer them protection in exchange for a share of their crops or a 28 The Police in a Free Society period of labor or service in wars against other feudal lords.

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  The Police in a Free Society

  Safeguarding Rights While Enforcing the Law

  • Todd Douglas(Author)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Praeger

    (Publisher)

  Chapter Two The Evolution of the Modern Police Force

  The basic mission for which police exist is to prevent crime and disorder as an alternative to the repression of crime and disorder by military force and severity of legal punishment. —Sir Robert Peel, 1829

  In the modern United States, we take the existence of police agencies and the presence of uniformed police officers for granted, something that has always been a part of life in our country. What most people fail to realize is that, historically, even the concept of the nation-state is relatively new, while the development of organized, professional police forces as a means of maintaining order is a much more recent development.

  After the fall of the Roman Empire in the fifth century, western Europe descended into centuries of darkness and chaos. The few governments were loosely defined kingdoms based upon ethnic and linguistic similarities, with little to no administrative infrastructure and no organized group charged with enforcing what few laws existed. Monarchs in the kingdoms of the Visigoths, Burgundians, and the like may have held absolute power in theory, but they had precious little means of exercising that power—for good or ill—on the level of the ordinary peasant, who was left to find his own means of protection from criminals. The map of Europe was drawn and redrawn for centuries into hundreds of large and small kingdoms, duchies, crowns, bishoprics, and principalities.

  It was during this medieval period, aptly referred to as the Dark Ages, that the system of feudalism emerged. In simplistic terms, feudalism involved peasants combining together under a powerful landowner who would offer them protection in exchange for a share of their crops or a period of labor or service in wars against other feudal lords. Effectively, the law was whatever the lord of the manor decreed, with enforcement being carried out unevenly; there certainly were no individuals whose primary occupation was enforcing laws or solving crimes.

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  Criminal Justice in England and the United States

  • David Hirschel, William Wakefield(Authors)
  • 1995(Publication Date)
  • Praeger

    (Publisher)

  Part II Law Enforcement in England This page intentionally left blank Chapter 5 The History and Organization of the Police In this chapter we shall examine the historical development of the English policing system as it rose to become the preeminent model for policing throughout the Western world. Because of England's central role in the devel- opment of modern law enforcement, particular attention will be paid to the historical precedents of modern policing systems. Primary focus will be on the forerunners of law enforcement structure and practice in the United States. In addition, we shall discuss the similarities and differences in the development of the police in England and the United States and present a brief description of the organization and structure of the English police. Perhaps the most frequent comment heard from American tourists and students visiting England concerning the police is about the polite, caring, and patient attitude they display toward travelers, an attitude that has always seemed to characterize the English police. This image has not been achieved as easily as one might imagine. In fact, much of this image is attributable to the efforts of the police reformers circa 1829. In addition, the English police have recently undergone critical scrutiny and questioning from the public concerning their traditional methods of enforcing the laws and keeping the "King's (or Queen's) peace." 1 How the English police have responded to this challenge, what direction they will take in the future, and how the public will respond are important questions that need to be addressed. However, before a discussion of that nature can take place, attention must be directed toward the history of policing in England which, of course, is also a study of the historical roots of the U.S. systems. This Anglo-American system of policing, which has evolved from Germanic roots, differs from the system that eventually became the basis

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  Murder and Mayhem

  Crime in Twentieth-Century Britain

  • David Nash, Anne-Marie Kilday(Authors)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • Bloomsbury Academic

    (Publisher)

  5 By any measure, the structure and practice of law enforcement in Britain would change out of all recognition during the following hun-dred years. The number of separate police forces in England and Wales fell from over 200 to 43; a reduction accompanied by increasing cen-tral government control, which in turn brought greater uniformity. By the 1920s, it was being suggested in Whitehall that the British police had been ‘transformed from a collection of separate (sometimes very separate) Forces into what amounted, for most practical purposes, to a single Service’, with the Home Office ‘in effect, a central police author-ity’. This was an exaggeration, but accurately identified future trends. 6 Practice changed significantly too, if gradually and unevenly, as beat policing gradually gave way to motorised patrols, specialised departments appeared and new forensic identification techniques were introduced. As important in many ways was the changing face of the British police over the century. Women officers joined the ranks from 1914, and in the post-war period, growing numbers of ethnic minority officers were recruited, though proportionally they would continue to remain less numerous than in the wider population. The introduction of both groups was gen-erally met with grudging acceptance by existing police officers, though hostility and discrimination would remain a persistent problem within the service. 7 These organisational and operational changes were partly a response to the shifting pattern of criminal behaviour during the century (itself a function of broader demographic, socio-economic and cultural trends in the country as well as changes in the criminal law); and partly a func-tion of the adoption of new tools, technologies and strategies in order to bring law-breakers to justice. It is important to emphasise, however, that there was nothing ineluctable about this process.

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  Community Policing and Peacekeeping

  • Peter Grabosky(Author)
  • 2009(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  While these propositions may seem like artificially simplistic “stalking horses,” they are a Police Development 203 lamentably accurate reflection of international police development programs that reflexively focus on the institution of policing but ignore critical external factors (especially sociopolitical context and function). The following analysis is designed to stimulate critical thinking on the roles of police in development and to assist in establishing realistic parame-ters for the successful application of policing strategies to some of the world’s most serious nation-building challenges. This analysis will consist of four sec-tions. The first section seeks to highlight the actual, as opposed to stated, role of policing in differing national circumstances and the confounding effect this can have on approaches to development. The second section extends this analysis by outlining two diagnostic structures that summarize the inter-national rule of law challenges confronting police and the policy options for dealing with them. The third integrates these two structures in a way that provides insights into “more right” as opposed to “more wrong” com-binations of problem and solution from an international policing perspec-tive. Finally, the fourth section examines five issues identified from practical experience that have caused difficulty in a variety of mission settings, which will be used to ground theoretical conclusions in a much harder reality. Policing Typologies At a superficial level, policing across the world appears similar. Police are seen as being responsible for the preservation of internal order and security of the state through enforcement of the rule of law and using, if necessary, state-sanctioned powers of coercion and force. Differences between police orga-nizations are perceived as being more of degree than type; that is, police are still police .

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  An Introduction to Policing

  • John Dempsey, Linda Forst, Steven Carter, , John Dempsey, Linda Forst, Steven Carter(Authors)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • Cengage Learning EMEA

    (Publisher)

  LO4 Summarize the regional differences in American policing that characterized the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. LO5 Explain how the events of the 1960s and 1970s influenced American policing, identify four events or people instrumental in the development of American policing, and explain the significance of the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration. L E A R N I N G O B J E C T I V E S Police History 1 C H A P T E R Copyright 2019 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. CHAPTER 1 POLICE HISTORY 3 INTRODUCTION The word police comes from the Latin word politia , which means “civil administration.” Politia goes back to the Greek word polis , “city.” Etymologically, there-fore, the police can be seen as those involved in the administration of a city. Politia became the French word police . The English adopted it and at first con-tinued to use it to mean “civil administration.” 1 The specific application of police to the administration of public order emerged in France in the early eighteenth century. The English word took on this meaning as well with the formation of the Marine Police, a force established in 1798 to protect merchandise in the port of London. The reference to the police as a civil authority is important. The police represent the civil power of gov-ernment, as opposed to the military power of govern-ment used in times of war. The members of the military, by necessity, are trained to kill and destroy, which is appropriate in war.

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  The Handbook of Social Control

  • Mathieu Deflem, Charles F. Wellford, Mathieu Deflem(Authors)
  • 2019(Publication Date)
  • Wiley-Blackwell

    (Publisher)

  Part IV Law Enforcement and Policing Passage contains an image

  15 History of Policing

  Massimiliano Mulone

  Since the pioneering works of the likes of Charles Reith (1938 , 1952 , 1956 ), Leon Radzinowicz (1948 , 1956 ), or T. A. Critchley (1967 , 1970 ), our knowledge of the social, economic, and political context from which the modern institution of police arose, as well as our knowledge of the other policing organizations that preceded or grew alongside the public police, have tremendously improved. Today, thanks to research by policing historians such as Philip Rawlings and Clive Emsley, we have access to much more detailed information on how the policing function was handled prior to the creation of what was termed the “New Police” in the first half of the 19th century. We also have a more precise idea of the debates and discussions surrounding the creation of the modern police, and how the necessity of such an institution was justified by its proponents and criticized by its opponents. In addition, our understanding of the slow process of institutionalization and professionalization that gave the public police the central and pivotal role it plays in the policing field today is also more rigorous.

  In fact, it would be impossible in just one chapter to go deeply into the details of the history of the police or the history of policing (for anyone interested in exploring more thoroughly the diverse forms policing has taken through the ages, I would recommend Policing: A Short History by Philip Rawlings (2002 ) and some of the numerous publications of Clive Emsley (1983 , 1996 , 2011 ); the work of Lawrence (2011 ) and Williams (2011

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  Management and Supervision in Law Enforcement

  • Kären Hess, Christine Hess Orthmann, Shaun LaDue, , Kären Hess, Christine Hess Orthmann, Shaun LaDue(Authors)
  • 2015(Publication Date)
  • Cengage Learning EMEA

    (Publisher)

  In addition, the U.S. is becoming a bifurcated society with more wealth, more poverty, and a shrinking middle class. The gap between the “haves” and the “have nots” is widening. Other social and cul-tural changes include the weakening influence of family, church, and school— the traditional sources of informal society control. Consequently, there exists a growing reliance on various forms of formal social control—namely law enforcement—to “keep the peace” in communities throughout our country. Personnel within police departments has also changed, with newer generations having different views of what is important and representing more women and greater ethnic diversity. The laws police enforce have also changed, mostly in favor of criminals and against the police. Technology is revolutionizing law enforcement, affecting everything from crime scene inves-tigations to law enforcement gear, weapons, and police vehicles. Technology has a significant impact on supervisors’ and managers’ effectiveness. For example, scheduling has become an art in and of itself in law enforcement, particularly because of unions and increasing union rules. The dynamics of an organization is that if it is trying to be proactive and progressive, those leading it need to embrace technology. Finally, the inability of law enforcement to win the “wars” on drugs and terrorism has shown that the police cannot fight crime and disorder by them-selves. They need the help of the citizens within their jurisdiction. This need has become even greater after the tragic events of September 11, 2001. The fear and risk of terrorism has pervaded the United States. Combating this heightened threat to our national security requires a combined effort. The challenges facing law enforcement and our entire country necessitate reex-amining our public organizations, including law enforcement. These changes may require a paradigm shift , a dramatic change in how some basic structures are viewed.

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  Crime, Policing and Punishment in England, 1660-1914

  • Drew D. Gray(Author)
  • 2016(Publication Date)
  • Bloomsbury Academic

    (Publisher)

  Crime, Policing and Punishment in England, 1660–1914 244 policing institutions have had on those tasked with policing communities. 158 While there has been the beginning of work on the role of the detective and the development of forensic science and ‘modern’ methods of policing, there is still much we need to learn about this. Too often histories of policing have been parochial or administrative and more research needs to be done to explore the reasons for the piecemeal introduction of forces after 1839. 159 There is also probably room for some more work on the Prosecution Associations and the extent to which they continued into the nineteenth century. Finally, I would like to suggest that the fundamental change in policing is similar to the change in prosecution: The state has increasingly taken over a role that was performed by what might loosely be termed a collective male citizenship. We have lost the participatory aspect of the criminal justice system as we have distanced ourselves from the process itself. Eighteenth-century Londoners routinely assisted victims of crime by helping to capture thieves; now we are strongly advised to avoid such displays of bravado lest we get injured or expose ourselves to a counter prosecution by the criminal himself. As McGowen has noted, this was very different in the past when the ‘fact that so much of law enforcement was carried on by private initiative meant that knowledge of what to do, as well as the willingness to undertake it, were shared by many more people than would be true after the introduction of a “reformed” police’. 160 As a consequence the police have assumed, for some at least, the position of our keepers rather than our servants; increasingly, the police represent the state rather than serving its people.

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  Essentials of Criminal Justice

  • Larry Siegel, John Worrall(Authors)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • Cengage Learning EMEA

    (Publisher)

  All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. 108 PA R T 2 • T H E P O L I C E A N D L AW E N F O R C E M E N T The police role is extremely varied and complex. Police officers are called on to deal with increasingly difficult and unpredictable situations. The crime problem continues to evolve in response to societal developments. Whether officers engage in preventive patrol, respond to calls for service, forge relationships with citizens, or aggressively target a small list of known criminal suspects, they have to be constantly vigilant and prepared. Anything less can give criminals the upper hand, and this includes both public and political support. Without one or the other, or both, police work becomes all the more difficult. This chapter describes the organization of police departments and their various operating branches: patrol, investigation, service, and administration. It discusses the realities and ambiguities of the police role and traces how the concept of the police mis- sion has been changing radically. The chapter concludes with a brief overview of some of the most important administrative issues confronting today’s law enforcement agencies. The Police Organization Most municipal police departments in the United States are independent agencies within the executive branch of government, operating without specific administrative control from any higher governmental authority.

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