Evolution of Policing Systems Throughout History

1. An Introduction to the Police Service Part One

2. The Idea of Policing: Some Questions to Consider • What does the word ‘police’ mean to you? • How did our society arrive at the current system of policing? • What is the difference between ‘the police’ and ‘policing’ • Can you think of other ways in which criminal activity and disputes are investigated or resolved other than by resort to calling the police? • What themes can you identify in the criticism that is made of modern police and policing

3. Pre-Literate Societies • These communities relied on co-operation so the need to resolve disputes was great. • Blood Feud. Typical of older societies with weak rule of law where family and kinship are the main source of authority. • Where different community ties (blood relations, relations of marriage, gender) exist the pressure to resolve the conflict is high.

4. Albanian building for protection of men involved in blood feuds which still continue today http://www.actnow.com.au/Issues/Blood_feuds.aspx

5. Anglo-Saxon Laws 600-1066 • Blood feud also supplemented by idea of God and custom inherent in law and obligation to Lord, King and God • Enforcement was a matter for the victim • Following the adoption of Christianity written laws required that offenders were delivered to the royal courts • To settle a feud became an obligation to the monarch and thereby God • Marked a shift away from blood feud to a more formal system of justice • The state gradually controlled non-judicial forms of justice as is shown by the rise of professional state-police-like positions (e.g. sarjeants of the hundred and constables of the hundred)

6. King Alfred • The principle of “common law” is established under Alfred

7. Norman Conquest (1066) and After • Domesday book establishes property and land ownership under the Norman kings • King obliged to promote spiritual welfare of the people and to oblige others to maintain peace and arrest offenders (used justice system to collect tax, enforce fines and confiscate property) • Blood feud principle survives as shown by the right to enforce summary execution of felons caught ‘in the act’ or ‘in flight from the act’ • System of crown involvement in the law extends as seen in ‘frankpledge’ (C13) where members (of a vill or township) were required to pursue offenders and ensure good behaviour of others on behalf of the monarch • Tithing (‘tithingman’) was a subdivision of a vill which enforced obligations and pursued offenders or kept them for the Sheriff (responsible for operation of frankpledge) to collect • Tithing. ‘Ten householders living near together and bound over as sureties for each other’s peaceable behaviour.’ • The ‘Watch’ was the group of men charged with carrying out these policing activities for no compensation and usually at night • The ‘hue and cry’ for the pursuit and capture of a criminal. Failure to raise it and to actively engage in the pursuit were themselves liable

8. By the end of the C14, “the justice of the peace had become a key part of an elaborate and co-ordinated system which for the first time provided the crown with a permanent judicial presence in the localities”. (Rawlings, 02, p.25) • The decay of the feudal system meant the system of ‘frankpledge’ could not survive • In the medieval system though the law was one amongst a variety of means of enforcing power

9. 1400-1600 The Tudors

10. State officials take control of policing functions (parish constable, justice of the peace) • The community retains functions too • Collapse of the feudal system created tensions between rich and poor. Labouring classes seen as threat to order • Poor were criminalised (vagrants had hole bored in the ear to identify them) • Certain activities also criminalised (illegitimacy, idleness, irreligion, poaching, drinking, dancing, playing games) and resulted in moral policing • Poor relief for the ‘deserving’ or ‘impotent’ poor only • Policing had become more bureaucratic and protective of the needs of the rich

11. C17 and C18 • Victim and householder increasingly displaced from a policing role • Policing (watching, patrolling, detection) more and more the role of paid professionals • Emergence of the role of watchmen and thief –takers • Rewards made detection more certain • Early 1800s Henry and John Fielding set up ‘The Bow Street Runners’ first official police force. Paid by Bow Street magistrates court and paid from official funds. Bow Street Horse Patrol armed with cutlasses, sticks and pistols. Thames River Police also emerge at this time • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bow_Street_Runners • Continued to view policing as a local matter though

12. Punishment: Hogarth’s drawing of the Stocks

13. C19 • Radicalism of the American and French revolutions feared to spread to England • Political and industrial disorder such as the riots against Catholic toleration (Gordon Riots 1820, The Peterloo Riot 1819) • Robert Peel became Home Secretary in 1822 and eventually parliament passed a law which established a police force for London (excluding the City) in 1829 • The population were subjected to ‘policing’ and had no say in its structure and operation • Police had power of arrest without warrant • Main objectives were the prevention of crime and the policing of public disorder. Detection remained primarily the responsibility of the victim • Criticised for being too paramilitary, taking the side of the authorities in political unrest (uniform, discipline and hierarchical organisation) and for being too expensive. Called ‘Jenny Darbies’ a corruption of ‘gens d’armes’ in French • Fingerprinting invented and used in 1899 • Local authority legislation gradually required police forces to be set up and funded from local funds but problems with corruption and rising crime rates continued

14. Peterloo Massacre • Richard Carlile, Henry Hunt, John Cartwright

15. Peterloo Memorial Plaque

16. Peelers in the 1800s • This model taken up gradually across the country but not without opposition from groups like the Chartists • The County and Borough Police Act 1856 makes it compulsory to establish a police force

17. London’s Last Watchman (Charlie Rouse) • The roles of the ‘new police’ and the watchman conflict

18. 1850-1939 • British policing recognised by others as a model of good practice in recognising the need to gain the consent of the people to police well • Not agreed with by those subject to policing • Widespread use/abuse of power in arresting people to prevent them from committing crime! • Concerned mainly with petty offences and with the ‘common man’ • Rise of the science of detection and the role of the detective • Increased power of the Home Office • Distinction drawn between ‘beat policeman’ and the ‘detective’ • Accepted that the state was now ‘almost entirely dependent upon the police force’ to deal with crime and the criminal

19. An Early Photograph/Mugshot of Suspect

20. Post-war to the present • Rising crime rates a cause of concern after the war • Post-war optimism about eradicating poverty and therefore crime seen to be problematic. Crime rates rise at the same time as income • Women officers opposed by Police Federation initially • Controversy of mechanised beats and the loss of contact with the public • Widespread use of the ‘unit beat’ system (combination of cars and foot patrols) • The Royal Commission on the Police 1960. Looked at recruitment and police community relations but failed to make significant changes to improve these things • PACE 1984 • Police community relations of the 1980 and 90s