The development of policing in the United States closely followed the development of policing in England. In the early colonies policing took two forms. It was both informal and communal, which is referred lớn as the “Watch,” or private-for-profit policing, which is called “The Big Stick” (Spitzer, 1979).
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The watch system was composed of community volunteers whose primary duty was khổng lồ warn of impending danger. Boston created a night watch in 1636, Thành Phố New York in 1658 và Philadelphia in 1700. The night watch was not a particularly effective sầu crime control device. Watchmen often slept or drank on duty. While the watch was theoretically voluntary, many “volunteers” were simply attempting to lớn evade military service, were conscript forced into lớn service by their town, or were performing watch duties as a size of punishment. Philadelphia created the first day watch in 1833 và Thành Phố New York instituted a day watch in 1844 as a supplement khổng lồ its new municipal police force (Gaines, Kappeler, và Vaughn 1999).
Augmenting the watch system was a system of constables, official law enforcement officers, usually paid by the fee system for warrants they served. Constables had a variety of non-law enforcement functions to persize as well, including serving as l& surveyors & verifying the accuracy of weights & measures. In many cities constables were given the responsibility of supervising the activities of the night watch.
These informal modalities of policing continued well after the American Revolution. It was not until the 1830s that the idea of a centralized municipal police department first emerged in the United States. In 1838, the city of Boston established the first American police force, followed by Thủ đô New York City in 1845, Albany, NY & Chicago in 1851, New Orleans và Cincinnati in 1853, Philadelphia in 1855, and Newark, NJ and Baltimore in 1857 (Harring 1983, Lundman 1980; Lynch 1984). By the 1880s all major U.S. cities had municipal police forces in place.
These “modern police” organizations shared similar characteristics: (1) they were publicly supported and bureaucratic in form; (2) police officers were full-time employees, not community volunteers or case-by-case fee retainers; (3) departments had permanent and fixed rules and procedures, and employment as a police officers was continuous; (4) police departments were accountable lớn a central governmental authority (Lundman 1980).
In the Southern states the development of American policing followed a different path. The genesis of the modern police organization in the South is the “Slave Patrol” (Platt 1982). The first formal slave sầu patrol was created in the Carolimãng cầu colonies in 1704 (Reichel 1992). Slave sầu patrols had three primary functions: (1) lớn chase down, apprehover, và return lớn their owners, runaway slaves; (2) khổng lồ provide a size of organized terror lớn deter slave sầu revolts; and, (3) khổng lồ maintain a khung of discipline for slave-workers who were subject to summary justice, outside of the law, if they violated any plantation rules. Following the Civil War, these vigilante-style organizations evolved in modern Southern police departments primarily as a means of controlling freed slaves who were now laborers working in an agricultural caste system, & enforcing “Jlặng Crow” segregation laws, designed to deny freed slaves equal rights and access lớn the political system.
The key question, of course, is what was it about the United States in the 1830s that necessitated the development of local, centralized, bureaucratic police forces? One answer is that cities were growing. The United States was no longer a collection of small cities và rural hamlets. Urbanization was occurring at an ever-quickening pace and old informal watch và constable system was no longer adequate lớn control disorder. Anecdotal accounts suggest increasing crime và vice in urban centers. Mob violence, particularly violence directed at immigrants & African Americans by trắng youths, occurred with some frequency. Public disorder, mostly public drunkenness và sometimes prostitution, was more visible & less easily controlled in growing urban centers than it had been rural villages (Walker 1996). But evidence of an actual crime wave sầu is lacking. So, if the modern American police force was not a direct response to lớn crime, then what was it a response to?
More than crime, modern police forces in the United States emerged as a response khổng lồ “disorder.” What constitutes social and public order depends largely on who is defining those terms, và in the cities of 19th century America they were defined by the mercantile interests, who through taxes và political influence supported the development of bureaucratic policing institutions. These economic interests had a greater interest in social control than crime control. Private & for profit policing was too disorganized & too crime-specific in form khổng lồ fulfill these needs. The emerging commercial elites needed a mechanism lớn insure a stable & orderly work force, a stable và orderly environment for the conduct of business, và the maintenance of what they referred to lớn as the “collective sầu good” (Spitzer and Scull 1977). These mercantile interests also wanted to lớn divest themselves of the cost of protecting their own enterprises, transferring those costs from the private sector khổng lồ the state.
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Sources
Gaines, Larry. Victor Kappeler, & Joseph Vaughn, Policing in America (3rd ed.), Cincinnati, Ohio: Anderson Publishing Company, 1999.
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Harring, Sidney, Policing in a Class Society: The Experience of American Cities, 1865-1915, New Brunswiông chồng, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1983.
Lundman, Robert J., Police và Policing: an Introduction, New York, New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1980.
Lynch, Michael, Class Based Justice: A History of the Origins of Policing in Albany, Albany, New York: Michael J. Hindelang Criminal Retìm kiếm Justice Center, 1984.
Platt, Tony, “Crime and Punishment in the United States: Immediate and Long-Term Reforms from a Marxist Perspective sầu, Crime & Social Justice 18 (1982).
Reichel, Philip L., “The Misplaced Emphasis on Urbanization in Police Development,” Policing and Society 3 no. 1 (1992).
Spitzer, Stephen, “The Rationalization of Crime Control in Capitacác mục Society,” Contemporary Crises 3, no. 1 (1979).
Spitzer, Stephen và Andrew Scull, “Privatization and Capitadanh sách Development: The Case of the Private Police,” Social Problems 25, no. 1 (1977).
Walker, Samuel, The Police in America: An Introduction, Thành Phố New York, New York: McGraw-Hill, 1996.
