History of Policing
The oldest forms of policing, the constable and the sheriff, date at least to the ninth
century. When crime was relatively infrequent, the general populace could be roused by the hue
and cry (“Stop, thief!”) and obliged to pursue the felon to justice. In 1285, amid great social
instability and turmoil at the close of the Crusades, England’s Statute of Winchester required
that all able-bodied men maintain weapons and serve in the Watch to protect villages and towns
from fire and outlaws. A year-long turn as the unpaid constable, responsible for bringing
lawbreakers before the King’s Courts, also became compulsory.
During the 1700s, England underwent a period of rapid transformations in agriculture,
technology, manufacture, and commerce known as the Industrial Revolution. People migrated to
the cities in search of jobs and urban populations expanded dramatically. Crime and disorder
became rampant and mob violence was a constant threat. Small, localized private police forces
were paid to guard parishes (neighborhoods), toll roads, docks, and warehouses, replacing the
unpaid and largely ineffective Watch. Their modern-day descendants are the professional
security forces and the special police forces.
Social unrest intensified after the Napoleonic Wars in the early 1800s and the English elite
sought ways to suppress or defuse the unemployed, desperate “dangerous classes” that haunted
English cities. The military was the only available force capable of dealing with a riot until a
reform movement brought Sir Robert Peel to power as Home Secretary.
In 1829, Peel established the first modern police force, the Metropolitan London Police.
Organized along military lines and in military-like uniforms to allay fears of a “secret police,” a
legacy of the secret network of informers during the French Revolution. Affectionately
nicknamed for their sponsor, the “Bobbies” were unarmed. They were primarily intelligence
gatherers, getting to know the residents and conditions of a specific area and reporting back to a
central administration through a chain of command. When news of trouble was discovered, large
numbers of police would flood the area to forestall the violence. Over the years, their peacekeeping duties were established on a reputation for fairness and firmness (see Box 3.1).
BOX 3.1
Sir Robert Peel’s Nine Principles of Law Enforcement
1. The basic mission for which the police exist is to prevent crime and disorder as an alternative
to their repression by military force and severity of legal punishment.
2. The ability of the police to perform their task is dependent on public approval of their
existence, actions, behavior, and on the ability of the police to secure and maintain public
respect.
3. The police must secure and maintain the respect and approval of the public as well as the
cooperation of the public in the task of observance of laws.
4. To recognize always that the extent to which the cooperation of the public can be secured
diminishes, proportionately, the necessity for the use of physical force and compulsion for
achieving police objectives.
5. To seek and to preserve public favor, not by catering to public opinion, but by constantly
demonstrating absolutely impartial service to law, in complete independence of policy, and
without regard to the justice or injustice of the substance of individual laws; by ready
offering of individual service and friendship to all members of the public without regard to
their wealth or social standing; by ready offering of sacrifice in protecting and preserving
life.
6. To use physical force only when the exercise of persuasion, advice, and warning is found to
be insufficient to obtain public cooperation to an extent necessary to secure observance of
law or to restore order; and to use only the minimum degree of physical force which is
necessary on any particular occasion for achieving a police objective.
7. To maintain at all times a relationship with the public that gives reality to the historic
tradition that the police are the public and that the public are the police; the police being the
only members of the public who are paid to give full-time attention to duties which are
incumbent on every citizen, in the interests of community welfare and existence.
8. To recognize always the need for strict adherence to police executive functions, and to
refrain from even seeming to usurp the powers of the judiciary or avenging individuals or the
state, and of authoritatively judging guilt and punishing the guilty.
9. To recognize always that the test of police efficiency is the absence of crime and disorder,
and not the visible evidence of police action in dealing with them. (Fyfe et al. 1997)
THE AMERICAN EXPERIENCE
English colonists brought to America the common law and the institutions of constables, county
sheriffs, and the Watch. Sheriffs’ duties centered on the maintenance of roads and bridges, fire
prevention and detection, and the service of writs for civil court matters; “crime fighting” was a
minor duty. On the American frontiers of the colonial and “Wild West” periods, where formal
institutions of government were weak, Committees of Vigilance defended isolated communities
from raiders, horse thieves, and other predators. Though vigilantes also had a dark side in some
locations, the vigilance committees were generally socially constructive, reflecting the older
community self-defense modes (Brown 1969).
American urbanization lagged behind England’s, but by the 1840s, conditions in American
cities were much like those in England. The idea of a police force was adopted, but it took a
radically different American form. For instance, Boston had a small “police force” under the City
Marshal in 1832, but its duties were more like those of today’s boards of health than modern
police departments (Lane 1967 [1975]). Where the English police were governed by the Home
Office (the equivalent of a cabinet-level department in America), each American city, town, and
county exercised control over its own police agency, with its own set of standards.