Paper 3
Stumbling towards Professionalism: A post-revisionist overview of the establishment of English policing in the nineteenth century
Keith Smith
Contents
I (1) Reform initiatives and Parliamentary reviews of London’s policing; (2) Enacting the Metropolitan Police Act 1829; (3) Rationalising London’s Policing: Implementing the 1829 Act and the Metropolitan Police Act 1839; II (1) Provincial Policing until 1856; (2) Rural Policing; (3) Urban Policing; (4) Provincial policing: establishing uniformity: The County and Borough Police Act 1856; III (1) Acceptance of a policed state; (2) Control and Accountability: Chief Constables, Police Authorities and the Home Office.; (3) From Prevention to Detection
Abstract
The criminal justice system underwent significant, and in some areas, fundamental, institutional, procedural and substantive change during the nineteenth century. Both the processes and forces bringing about these developments, or in several cases the absence of change, have provoked differing, sometimes openly conflicting historiographical accounts. Analyses of the foundation and evolution of professional policing have been no exception. More particularly, historical explanations have ranged in emphasis from largely instrumentalist (either effective policing as a key element of the capitalist requirement of a quiescent workforce or in the resistance of democratic political movement), to those which look at evolving police professionalism as an inevitable civilising, consensus driven process, complementing nineteenth century social and economic advancement.
To a greater or lesser degree, such diverse accounts have indisputably contributed to providing a richly textured explanation of modern policing’s evolution. Yet, despite this, arguably inadequate emphasis has been given to the combined or several consequences of social and political happenstance, long-running disputes over relinquishing local autonomy and accountability, and the conditioning effects of other contemporaneous features of the criminal justice system. It is suggested here that a better appreciation of the likely cumulative consequences of these diverse forces promises a more realistic historical understanding of the pace and nature of policing evolution within a wider criminal justice context. This examination of the principal features of nineteenth century policing’s development seeks to give more appropriate emphasis both to its disjointed, dissonant, frequently accidental quality as well as its sometimes apparent incompatibility and inconsistency with other elements of the criminal justice system.
This working paper is an abbreviated version of a chapter on the historical development of policing which will form part of the criminal justice and criminal law sections of the Victorian Volumes of the forthcoming Oxford History of English Laws, (Oxford University Press). Footnote references to other relevant criminal justice chapters are identified as “[…Oxford History, ch --]”.
Stumbling towards Professionalism: A post-revisionist overview of the establishment of English policing in the nineteenth century, (2007), ISBN 978-9516976-8-9