POLICE

Haia Shpayer-Makov

Policing has taken many forms historically and has gone through radical transformations, making it difficult to offer a precise and universal definition of the term "police." This essay employs the term broadly to mean official organs entrusted with the enforcement of law and order and endowed with the right to use force for public ends.

Throughout most of history the police were only one, and not necessarily the prevalent, instrument of law enforcement. In the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance (1300–1600) a variety of institutions and individuals performed the functions of law and order maintenance that we now associate with the institutions called "police." Moreover, the authority to sanction violence in the name of law enforcement was not the monopoly of the rulers. Life in medieval Europe was highly localized, and this was reflected in the application of power and the control of crime as well. Political sovereignty was fragmented and local authority was largely independent of royal direction. Many cities authorized special patrols and watches to protect life and property and to bar strangers from entry, particularly at night. Manorial lords often imposed their will and/or defended their rights with their own private means of coercion. Some religious institutions, such as the Inquisition, deployed their own law enforcers to attain their sectional goals. The church, universities, guilds, and corporations had their own means of implementing administrative rulings. In the relatively unified kingdom of England, a more systematic policing structure emerged, based on local lords who were appointed by the Crown as justices of the peace, and on their subordinates, the constables, who helped them keep the peace and bring malefactors to justice. Service as a constable, though unpaid, was obligatory for adult men in the parish for one year by rotation or appointment.

In most places in Europe, however, a permanent coercive force was nonexistent, and the enforcement of laws, rules, and norms depended on the acceptance of their legitimacy by the local population. In general, sanctions and social pressure were sufficient to regulate internal affairs, and if not, the community often administered its own justice. Warnings, reprimands, and ostracism could compel conformity to rules. The local worthies (for example, the parish priest or the lord's agent) often acted as go-betweens to settle an injury, by agreement of both parties involved.

It is during the seventeenth century that the expansion and growing importance of the police in European society are first observable. This change did not signify any sort of break with the past. The emerging policing structure was rudimentary, and it functioned side by side with traditional patterns of law enforcement well into the modern period. The more intensive adoption of police organs, though, marked the beginning of a general trend, which in retrospect constituted one of the major societal developments of the modern era.

To be sure, no one system of policing was common throughout Europe at any one time, nor was this area unified by a similar chronology. The presence, character, functions, purposes, and authority of law enforcement agencies varied greatly not only between states but also from one region to the other and over time. Furthermore, the development of national policing systems proceeded at different speeds. Nonetheless, many parts of Europe experienced parallel developments with regard to their civil and criminal justice systems, and political bodies, whether local or central, private or public, took similar steps to enforce them.

European societies often looked to each other for models of policing, both positive and negative, to emulate or to discard. Whereas Russia, Prussia, Austria, and Italy were deeply influenced by the French mode of policing, in England opposition to police reform during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and the implementation of reform thereafter, were both guided by rejection of the French system, which was perceived as too authoritarian and intrusive for the British tradition of government. Later on in the nineteenth century police reformers on both sides of the Channel felt they had a lot to learn from each other's systems. Once reorganized early in the nineteenth century, the English constabulary became a frame of reference for police forces all over the world. Conquest was also a factor in the import and transfer of ideas and practices from one part of Europe to another. French expansion under Napoleon resulted in the implementation of a centralized police system in some areas under subjugation. And policing arrangements in the European colonies were molded under the impact of European rule.

Thus, despite wide diversity, a pattern of policing evolved in Europe made up of different combinations of law-enforcing traditions and methods in each nation, but having a measure of uniformity. Processes of consolidation and convergence accelerated in the nineteenth century and by the early twentieth century were well established, resulting in a policing structure generally resembling that of today. Broadly similar in the various European states, the police became a fundamental component of the criminal justice system and a mainstay of all governments in Europe and, in light of the European influence, throughout the world.

EARLY MODELS OF POLICING

Clearly, the expansion of formal police forces at the dawn of the modern era was connected to broader social phenomena. Economic, social, cultural, and political forces, which comprised what we call the processes of modernization, made an indelible mark on police development. Nevertheless, it is widely accepted today that the expansion of the police in Europe cannot be explained apart from state formation during the late Middle Ages and early modern period, although theorists interpret this relationship in varied ways. For example, marxist historians, while concurring that specialized police agencies developed in the context of the state, link the rise of police power more closely to the transition from a kin-based to a class-dominated society. Viewing class conflict as the driving force behind social change, and the emergence of private property at the end of the Middle Ages as the basis of class formation, marxists maintain that the need of the rising capitalist class to control the means of production accounted for the growth of police institutions. According to this interpretation, the state used its growing monopoly over violence and surveillance to support capital in its struggle to achieve and maintain a privileged position vis-à-vis labor. Indeed, both business and the state were concerned with preserving the socioeconomic order and thus often shared compatible and even overlapping objectives. Indubitably, the state commonly represented class interests, although it also had other goals that it strove to achieve and therefore cannot be seen solely as the servant of the capitalist class.

Viewed from the broader perspective of state building, the ability of emerging states to consolidate their power within clearly demarcated boundaries depended on their ability to impose uniform rule, coordinate internal control, and monopolize the use of force. Eroding or coopting the power of feudal lords and other independent political agents was thus essential for state builders. To attain these goals, sovereign states had to develop both their own sources of income and instruments of coercion. Invariably, the creation of standing armies accompanied the centralization of power. Aside from fighting wars to maintain the independence of the state, the army became the principal means of internal pacification in the early modern period (c. 1500–1800). Gradually sovereigns came to accept that they could not routinely achieve control and carry out law-enforcing functions without civil organs invested with punitive powers and loyal to the regime. The steadily growing role of the ruler as a legislator and source of ordinances made this requirement even more compelling.

In contrast to the army, a grid of police forces was not immediately established to meet the demands of consolidation. Initially, the state relied mainly on the army, judiciary, bureaucracy, and private entrepreneurs to collect taxes and gain control over its territories. Permanent, centrally directed police organs appeared only very slowly across the European landscape despite the absolutist character of most continental regimes in the early modern period. Not until the middle of the seventeenth century, with the accelerated growth of state bureaucracies, can we see the beginnings of a more resolute and methodical policy for the establishment of formal police institutions. The political scientist and police historian David Bayley has suggested that the centralization of law enforcement was likely to occur where attempts to consolidate state control were met by prolonged violent resistance. Three major European powers illustrate his point.

France, facing incessant attempts to stem the tide of state encroachment into local power bases, pioneered the notion of a centralized police structure which, though modified greatly over time, has persisted to the present. During the first half of the seventeenth century, royal officials were made responsible for administering justice, finances, and public order in provincial centers. However, a highly rebellious aristocracy and various instances of domestic disorder prompted Louis XIV (ruled 1643–1715) to reinforce royal power in 1667 by creating the specialized post of lieutenant of police for Paris under his direct control. This official and the policemen at his disposal were entrusted with a wide range of tasks. The considerable powers invested in the post, and close proximity to the king, made the head of police one of the most important officeholders in France. Additionally, as was customary in early modern Europe in the case of high offices, the upper echelons of the new Paris police held venal posts designed to meet the perpetual need of the monarch for revenues to finance his wars. Ever more intent on furthering central administrative control over the periphery at the expense of privileged individuals and bodies as well as on gaining revenue, Louis eventually nominated lieutenants of police and police commissioners in the principal cities and towns of France in 1699. A network of urban police administrations was thus created directly under the supervision of the police lieutenant in Paris, aimed at allowing the ruler closer surveillance over his kingdom. However, these venal posts were often purchased by a local count or bishop who took little notice of orders issues by the lieutenant in Paris, though he might have corresponded with the lieutenant and sent him information—if it suited the local official's interests. For all the efforts made by the French monarchs, policing in the provinces remained largely local.

Two other European powers, Prussia and England, support Bayley's argument from a negative perspective. Though no less absolutist, Prussian rulers allowed the Junkers (landed aristocrats) to exercise police functions in their own territories. The Junkers, having largely accepted the monarch's dominance and their own obligation to serve in his army and administration from the seventeenth century on, posed no threat to the growing concentration of power in the hands of the royal sovereign. Similarly, sporadic popular resistance to state activity was not perceived by the Prussian monarchs as threatening. With the unification of Germany in the early 1870s, each constituent state largely took charge of its own police matters, a situation that resumed in the post–World War II era in West Germany after the interlude of the Nazi period, when Adolf Hitler had established the Gestapo as a centralized police force. The relatively decentralized police structure in Prussia and later in Germany, however, did not prevent the rulers from using the police as a powerful political weapon or from maintaining strong control over policing in cities, towns, and counties. In England, where royalty had asserted control over its territories in the Middle Ages, considerably predating the consolidation of the modern continental state, the aristocracy was allowed to wield power locally as it presented no serious challenge to the unity of England. No centralized police system was created. English law enforcement continued to be based mainly on local justices of the peace and constables.

It is important to emphasize that even where the state took no systematic steps to set up centralized law enforcement, it nonetheless benefited from the spread of police control locally in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. However unprofessional, unimpressive, and mostly socially inferior, local policemen exerted power through surveillance and represented legitimate authority. The element of sovereignty was implicit in the nature of their task and in their powers of prohibition and coercion. Moreover, certain locally controlled police, such as the constables in England, actually acted in the name of the monarch even if they were not under royal control. Thus, in an indirect way, wherever policing existed, it contributed to the general functioning of state institutions and the centralization of state power.

DUTIES OF THE POLICE IN THE EARLY MODERN PERIOD

Between the fifteenth and the eighteenth centuries the term "police" was understood altogether differently from today. It did not refer to personnel or to an institution but to the application of laws and ordinances. Coming into use during the fifteenth century in the German territories (in its German form policey), the word police (which derived from the Greek polis, meaning city-state) denoted the administration of domestic affairs generally. The tasks undertaken by organs associated with policing were thus far more extensive than in the twentieth century.

State security. An analysis of police activity in the early modern period reveals that only a small fraction of it concentrated on the detection or prevention of crime. As power in a given country became increasingly centered on the sovereign, and as the sovereign invested greater energy in securing the state against internal opposition, the relevance of the police as a political instrument grew steadily. As early as 1554, the Russian tsar Ivan the Terrible (ruled 1533–1584) set up the infamous oprichniki, a police force of six thousand uniformed men who, in addition to serving as his bodyguards, also supervised public places. Unbridled by any legal restrictions, this force used mass terror and torture to guard the sovereign and his regime against perceived threats from the aristocracy, the church, and the peasants. Members of the force were rewarded for their efforts by grants of land confiscated from their original owners. The oprichniki survived for only seven or eight years, though it set a pattern for successive Russian regimes for over four centuries. While the sixteenth century was not yet ripe for a permanent body of political policemen in Russia, various tsarist officials filled the task of forestalling subversion until, in 1697, as part of a broad centralization effort, tsar Peter the Great (ruled 1682–1725) established the Preobrazhensky Office to tighten his hold on the population. From then on, under different names and authorities, an almost uninterrupted chain of secret police organizations in Russia responded with varying degrees of repression to the slightest indication of discontent in the country, thereby undermining the development of a civil society distinct from the state.

Besides disrupting or suppressing the activities of groups and individuals suspected of disloyalty, the organs charged with political policing engaged in amassing information on a multitude of subjects, a reflection of the broader strategy adopted by state makers of obtaining systematic knowledge as a way of enhancing state power and increasing revenue. Not satisfied with the employment of visible police forces, Louis XIV also resorted to extensive undercover police operations. This use of spies and informers was not unprecedented. Regimes everywhere had relied on such methods to protect themselves against real and imagined plots and conspiracies as well as any other opposition. Louis, however, was to excel in this respect. With the help of the lieutenants of the Paris police, he entrenched a nationwide system of surveillance while also utilizing the provincial police to maintain close control over dissidence. A century later, at the start of the French Revolution, this royal police force disintegrated, and attempts were made to establish locally elected forces in French cities. These efforts were short-lived, and successive regimes, whether headed by the Bourbons, revolutionary governments, the Directory, or the Bonapartes, continued (and under Napoleon even markedly extended) the tradition of utilizing both open and secret policing to strengthen central power. As with other aspects of French culture, this system was studied and in some cases adopted by rulers across the Continent.

The Habsburg monarchy was equally notorious in employing police officials to observe anyone who might be a potential enemy and to act vigorously upon this information. Having gained supreme royal power over the periphery somewhat later than France (in the mid-eighteenth century), Austria lagged behind in forming a systematic network of spies and informers. Still, Austrian monarchs, perceiving themselves as highly vulnerable, managed to outdo the French in the use they made of this potent tool. Greatly improving upon the existing mechanisms of social control, Emperor Joseph II (ruled 1765–1790) entrusted his agents with reporting on the activities and opinions of ordinary people as well as of the aristocracy, clergy, and such other institutions as charities and schools. In building this apparatus of surveillance, he was guided by Count Pergen, an innovator in police administration who, like General Aleksandr Benckendorff in early-nineteenth-century Russia and Joseph Fouché under the Directory, Napoleon I, and the restored Bourbon monarchy, was instrumental in helping monarchs organize and operate an extensive political-cum-police network. The French Revolution and its aftermath led to a tightening up of police operations almost everywhere in Europe. Haunted by fears of revolutionary ideas and French agents, Austria was galvanized into an incessant vigil over organizations and individuals who might fall prey to such ideas, over state officials to ensure their loyalty to the regime, and over possible spies.

Although governments also used various public servants of the Crown to look out for possible sources of sedition, it was the secret police who were most intensively involved. Generally better remunerated than ordinary policemen (when these were paid), secret agents were specially recompensed for their zeal in rounding up suspects or submitting incriminating reports. Countless innocent victims paid dearly for these efforts. The agents' intelligence gathering did not aim solely at overt activities but included reporting on opinions. Moreover, they also punished suspects. Their task was internal security, but these agents extended their operations abroad to keep track of travelers and to intimidate political refugees who flocked to other European cities as a result of repression at home, particularly during the nineteenth century. While the effectiveness of these operations is impossible to measure, clearly they did not manage to stop the spread of dissent and stem the tides of revolution in the late eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries, especially in those countries in which the police were all-powerful. They may, however, have prevented specific challenges to regimes, such as cases of potential assassinations.

Public order. Beyond the need to curb oppositional elements, routine order was also considered essential for social stability and state control. The notion that the sheer presence of police forces could deter lawbreaking and prevent acts of defiance was increasingly accepted in the eighteenth century by both national and local governments. European cities had long maintained official bodies acting in a police capacity, in addition to military garrisons, patrols, and watchmen, and now they were determined to expand policing arrangements in the locality. Reform of the administrative organs of state during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries facilitated the evolution of more specialized and centralized systems of policing. The growing importance of cities as centers of both power and civil unrest impelled central authorities to concentrate on securing order and effective law enforcement in urban areas. As a result of both state and municipal efforts, cities had better-organized institutions of policing, while policing in the countryside was largely contingent upon local initiatives. Police administrators were nominated in some capitals. Paris led the way in 1667. St. Petersburg followed suit in 1718, Berlin in 1742, and Vienna in 1751. Directors of police were appointed in many other cities all over Europe during the course of the eighteenth century. London was the most prominent exception to this trend, although policing arrangements there underwent certain reforms in the eighteenth century. Significantly, the city teemed with petty crime and unruliness.

State security and public order were obviously interrelated, and therefore keeping the peace became an important factor in the widespread trend during the eighteenth century to restructure policing arrangements. Additionally, central and local rulers were impelled by the need to modernize their societies and provide solutions to mounting urban problems. A more prosperous and healthier population could also augment the resources of the state and its military capability. Local elites were also prompted by civic pride. While in Russia police regulations focused on the repressive and negative aspects of law enforcement, in French, German, Dutch, and Scandinavian towns police ordinances incorporated a plethora of constructive tasks, including essential municipal services such as street lighting, street cleaning, garbage collection, supervision of public hygiene, and monitoring the quality of the water supply. Depending on the institutional power structure in each locality, and in the absence of other officials to perform such jobs, police agents often became responsible for fire prevention, first aid, finding shelter for abandoned children, the provision of welfare and food supply, and the control of traffic. Sometimes policemen were assigned the task of reminding inhabitants to lock their doors. Whether in the interest of the state, the local authorities, or the common good, the police performed essentially noncoercive duties, which improved the quality of life in cities and towns. Eighteenth-century observers consistently commented on how safe, orderly, and hygienic Paris had become, certainly in comparison to London.

The maintenance of order in the countryside was also basic to state security. Particularly important was public safety on the roads and highways. Here, too, France proved prescient in organizing a patrol system responsible to the central authorities. The origins of the maréchaussée, a paramilitary body of mounted and foot constabulary tasked to look out for deserters and protect rural inhabitants from violence by soldiers, can be traced to the medieval period. In the sixteenth century the role of this body was expanded to include maintaining order, repressing highway robbery and smuggling, gathering information, and monitoring vagabonds and civil crime in the countryside, while at the same time its military character became more distinct. Performing both military and police duties, these ex-soldiers were fully armed and uniformed, lived in barracks, and operated in military conditions mostly under military authority. In the eighteenth century the maréchaussée was reorganized into a nationwide force with clearly defined tasks and a coordinated presence throughout the country. In 1791, at the height of police experimentation by the revolutionaries, it was restructured again, as the Gendarmerie Nationale, serving as a model for most European countries during the next few decades.

Policing economic activities and public morality. State interests in early modern Europe went beyond the security of the regime and the preservation of order. No less important was the regulation of industry and commerce. Most European states pursued mercantilist policies aimed at augmenting national wealth and military power. In implementing such policies, national and local police officers in countries such as France, Prussia, and Austria intervened in various stages of the processes of production and trade by, for example, inspecting markets and fairs, supervising food prices, and checking the accuracy of weights and measures. In so doing, these officers penalized instances of usury and embezzlement and prevented monopolies and profiteering.

A key element in mercantilist strategies was to ensure the industriousness of the population. With demographic growth forcing surplus populations off the land, and the growing mobility of labor, governments and local authorities adopted policies of either criminalizing or domesticating transient labor and of setting paupers to work. The police played an active role in regulating the labor supply and inculcating the ethos of paternalism and hard work among the lower orders. Particularly targeted for police attention were masterless men and laborers who refused to work for low wages. The able-bodied unemployed were forced to work, runaway servants were apprehended, and insubordinate workers were punished. The aim was to reduce the number of indigents who became a burden on the community and to augment the supply of cheap labor. Even if these policies were implemented only sporadically and inconsistently, the police benefited both the state economy and the nascent capitalist class. Furthermore, acculturation of the surplus and marginal population was undertaken because this population was seen as a source of social instability. Subsequently, ordinances were issued and measures were taken all over Europe against beggars, vagrants, peddlers, gypsies, Jews, and/or casual workers.

The policing of economic activities was not carried out for material reasons alone. The police were also an important tool for regulating conduct and fostering conformity to accepted social norms. Fear of godlessness sometimes led to the enforcement of religious observance in Catholic and Protestant countries alike, with infractions of Sunday and holiday observance treated with particular harshness. This impulse to standardize moral behavior resulted in police attacks on various forms of popular culture and amusements throughout Europe. Feasts and festivals were often rigidly supervised, certain games prohibited, and theatrical performances censored. In some areas, dress was inspected and ostentation banned. Sexual misbehavior was also occasionally treated heavy-handedly by the police. In some places, mothers were punished for bearing children out of wedlock. It was also common for police to inspect lodging houses and regulate street prostitution. Police registration of local inhabitants and visiting foreigners enabled local and national authorities to gain information and monitor their movements.

LIMITATIONS OF EARLY POLICING SYSTEMS

Clearly, policing in continental Europe in the early modern period implied growing penetration into the private lives of ordinary people. In comparison with today, however, such intervention was only intermittent and only partly the product of state regulation. The attempts to create strong states and achieve territorial consolidation by forming or expanding instruments of rule succeeded only partially. An array of bodies and offices fulfilling various, often overlapping, police and nonpolice functions continued to coexist in the different territorial entities, with little or no collaboration between them. Only some were part of the state bureaucracy, while others were controlled by local power holders or were privately employed. In fact, until the nineteenth century, no state had developed a full-scale nationwide police network. Small communities throughout Europe continued to rely on informal arrangements, and local lords still exercised both police and judicial powers. In eastern Europe, policemen were often the protégés of local dignitaries, who used them principally to execute their own private orders. All of this meant that large areas of Europe remained free of the presence of permanent forces of law and order, and the existing ones were unevenly distributed. Even as rulers enacted a growing number of laws and ordinances, they neither possessed adequate manpower nor allocated sufficient finances to implement them throughout entire territories. In times of disturbances they preferred to employ the military. This partial condition of law enforcement reflected the limited power of the absolute state. Paradoxically, in England, where constables were less intrusive and had a more limited range of duties, the policing system was relatively widespread and entrenched, though there, too, enforcement was patchy.

The sparse distribution of police agencies often impelled the community to rely on its own resources to pursue offenders. Local inhabitants in England were supposed to raise the hue and cry if they detected lawbreakers. The novelist Henry Fielding, who was a London magistrate in the mid-eighteenth century, along with his brother John, also a London magistrate, appealed to the general public and to pawnbrokers in particular to disclose any information they might have about stolen property, thieves, and their methods. In England and in many continental communities, redress for crime fell almost entirely on the victims. It was they who brought the crime to the attention of the authorities and they themselves were often responsible for capturing the offender, collecting evidence, finding witnesses, and bearing the costs of prosecution. The propertyless clearly had less access to the legal system, allowing a substantial number of culprits to be spared. The haphazard nature of law enforcement also gave rise to commercial enterprise. For example, the Thames Police of London (established in 1798) was initially funded by private insurance companies with a view to reducing theft from the London port and retrieving stolen property. The infliction of harsh punishments throughout Europe on selected offenders, often for the slightest deviation from the norms, was partly meant to serve as a deterrent to crime in the absence of systematic law enforcement.

THE EMERGENCE AND CONSOLIDATION OF THE MODERN POLICE

The modern police configuration took shape only gradually. During the course of the nineteenth century, governments everywhere took steps to make policing routinized, pervasive, and constant, even though much of law enforcement was still locally controlled. Despite budgetary constraints, police forces were increasingly publicly funded and, initially in cities, uniformed foot patrols became the principal and largest component of the national policing structure. In 1829 two major cities in Europe—Paris and London—were provided with a system of uniformed police, followed in 1848 by Berlin, the first city in Germany to have a municipal police force. Provincial cities, towns, and villages soon acquired their own police as well. State-controlled gendarmeries appeared across almost the entire Continent, filling the vacuum in much of rural Europe where the law had been only sporadically enforced by official police forces. The authority of the gendarmeries sometimes extended to cities, as was the case in France and Prussia. The fact that most countries opted for a military style of force to police the countryside demonstrated the widespread impact of military models and culture on police development.

As a result of such initiatives, police forces grew in size and complexity, and the policeman became a familiar figure in almost every neighborhood. His uniformed presence was expected to be sufficiently threatening to deter would-be lawbreakers. Moreover, the policeman gradually became both a key agent for integrating people and territory and a visible symbol of the state's jurisdiction.

Evolving duties. The police labor force that emerged in the course of the nineteenth century was typically full-time, regularly paid, and subject to bureaucractic control. Work for the large proportion of policemen who composed the lower levels of the hierarchy was harsh, wearisome, and meagerly remunerated. However, the regularity of income and the various welfare benefits extended to policemen in many countries made the job attractive, especially for the unskilled and for displaced rural workers. For their part, decision makers in countries such as Britain generally preferred rural to industrial workers, since the latter were seen as less compliant and loyal. Police relationships with social groups from which they emanated form an important part of modern social history. Generally, police have reliably disciplined popular unrest when called upon to do so.

Police officers throughout Europe continued to discharge a mosaic of functions, retaining many of their old tasks. In addition to preventing and discovering unlawful activities and maintaining order and stability, the police still were expected to strengthen industrial discipline, control the indigent, and carry out various duties in the areas of public health and welfare. Supporting bourgeois standards, they policed deviations from moral norms and restrained popular pastimes. Some estimates suggest that a full half of police time in urban areas aimed at controlling popular leisure. In the same vein, police cleared public spaces of petty merchants, gamblers, and the drunk and disorderly even more vigorously than before. Traffic control and the prevention of juvenile delinquency became important police assignments toward the end of the nineteenth century. However, with the exception of the British force, the range of police tasks actually narrowed substantially during the course of the century. By the beginning of the twentieth century, for example, the police had largely abandoned the policing of the poor and the provision of a number of municipal services as other state administrators and agencies emerged to handle these functions. In contrast, while governments continued to employ armies throughout the nineteenth century to keep order in times of emergency, particularly during riots, civil disorder, and strikes, police reorganization allowed the gradual replacement of the army by the police, which during the twentieth century took predominant charge of maintaining internal public order, leaving the army as the principal guardian of external security.

Indeed, the general trend in the occupational world toward specialization and differentiation of tasks was reflected in efforts by police administrators throughout Europe to demarcate responsibilities more clearly and provide more specialized services. Separate departments were created for uniformed policing, detective work, political surveillance, and specialized tasks. These developments pointed to the growing professionalization of policing in Europe. A reflection of this trend was increasing attention to technical expertise. Toward the end of the nineteenth century police forces in Europe adopted the telegraph, telephone, fingerprinting, forensic science, photography, and other new technologies as indispensable tools for their work. Another modern notion was the application of uniform rules for the administration of the force. Entrants had to comply with a set of established selection criteria demanding not only physical stamina but also literacy skills, and the period of training that recruits underwent was progressively expanded. Whether as part of state or local government, the police were relatively ahead of private institutions in establishing standardized procedures, amassing systematic information, and compiling statistical records relating to various aspects of their work.

What also distinguished the new police was a growing tendency to follow due legal process or at least present a semblance of adherence to the rule of law. The spread of constitutional structures during the nineteenth century meant that government in general was held more accountable, and heads of state were obliged to operate within the confines of the law. Among the most visible representatives of the state, the police, too, had to demonstrate that they were subordinate to the law. Although secret police departments often disregarded legal procedures, official rhetoric increasingly adopted the vocabulary of the Enlightenment. Sensitivity to public opinion became more evident during the latter part of the nineteenth century in such liberal societies as England, although even states which retained absolutist notions of government, like Germany, were forced to justify police activities.

Police and the public. In effect, state expansion only augmented the state's dependency on the cooperation of its citizens, whose loyalty now had to be won. Although the working classes were everywhere the primary target of both secret and open policing, their demands were also considered, especially after the revolutions of 1848. The more liberal the government, the more it stressed that the main objective of the police was not to serve the interests of the state or the privileged classes but to defend the individual and the community against unlawful intervention. Instructions to be cordial to the public pervaded the training of police constables in England. Clearly, surveillance and control needed to be less visible or explicit and more subtle, a tendency that coincided with the growing reluctance to use the might of the army to curb protest.

The policed population was never passive regarding police power. Hostility to police activity by the governed continued throughout the nineteenth century and beyond. By the beginning of the twentieth century, however, the presence of the police and their purposes had been accepted, if sometimes grudgingly, as a necessity. The appearance of police officers as major figures in European novels of the nineteenth century and the emergence of detective fiction at the end of the century illustrate the growing legitimacy and importance of police officials in modern society. As more people appealed to police for assistance even in private matters, the police in turn extended services relating to individual safety and everyday needs.

Historical accounts of the shift to full-time and systematic policing adduce a variety of factors. The weakening of the paternalistic face-to-face forms of control in rural areas, the rapid expansion of cities, and the growth of industrial capitalism, which required a disciplined labor force, created an underlying feeling that contemporary police arrangements were inadequate and inefficient. Incidents of collective violence and civil strife were commonly interpreted by the new bourgeoisie as symptoms of a social breakdown. Now in a better position than ever to influence state policies, this sector opposed any restraint on the expansion of the capitalist economy and any challenge to private property. Reports about rising crime rates and fears of the growing power of the industrial masses, the more organized nature of political protest, and the spread of socialist doctrines calling for the overthrow of the social order strengthened pressure to alter traditional policing arrangements. An organized and permanent police force was recommended as a means of ensuring punishment. Democratization, the decline of overt public punishment, and the humanization of personal relations were also important in laying the groundwork for police reform. The restructuring of police forces was designed to improve control over cities, suppress new forms of crime, and supervise the lower social orders. The rise of new concepts of state management that stressed administrative efficiency and rationalization also shaped the new police.

English and continental police. Despite the convergence of varied national models into a generally discernible pattern of law enforcement during the nineteenth century, a broad dividing line was observable between the police in England and the police in the major continental powers such as France, Germany, and Italy. Early uncritical accounts of police development in England emphasized such a distinction by portraying the origins, aims, and practices of the English police as radically different from police histories elsewhere. Such observations mirrored the arguments of police reformers in nineteenth-century England who maintained that, unlike its continental counterparts, the constabulary system had arisen from the community and was therefore the custodian of traditional liberties and a servant of the people. Implicit in these arguments was the conviction that the mission of the English police was simply to protect the majority against a handful of violators of the law. Since the 1970s, police historians writing from the perspective of social history have challenged such interpretations and have shown that the difference between the police on the Continent and in England was more apparent than real. They have pointed to the fierce resistance that the new police encountered in all working-class areas and to their societal partiality. Various studies have focused on the role that the police played in suppressing demonstrations and popular forms of entertainment and in their biased and brutal interventions in industrial disputes. In these studies the new English police appear as an instrument of bourgeois reforms and interests. Research has also revealed that the English police were no less corrupt or corruptible than police forces across the Channel and that English policemen did not always adhere to the letter of the law.

Nonetheless, in some respects the English police may be contrasted with the majority of the continental powers. In much of mainland Europe the modern police emerged out of the politics of absolutism and matured against a background of uprisings and revolutions. The absence of such experiences informed the evolution of policing in England. The result was that while continental police forces tended to pay greater attention to keeping rulers in power and less to the prevention of crime and protection of property, the emphasis in England was substantially different. Although British governments had used spies and informers to keep a sharp eye on agitators and assure internal peace, until the quite late establishment of the Special Branch (in 1884) to combat Irish and anarchist terrorism these agents had never been part of a permanent system, as was often the case on the other side of the Channel, and they had never been used as extensively. In fact, less occupied with state security, Britain was almost the only European power to extend asylum and shelter to the many political refugees fleeing persecution in Europe. Moreover, whereas a number of continental forces were responsible to central government, the English police continued to rely on a local system of policing, albeit against growing state intervention in police affairs as in other aspects of life. Of all the professional forces formed throughout England during the middle decades of the nineteenth century, only the Metropolitan Police of London were organized as a central body accountable to the Home Office. All other police, whether borough or county, were locally controlled.

In another context, all police forces in Europe bore some resemblance to military institutions, whether in the use of uniforms, rigid discipline, hierarchical structure, ritual, or violence. Yet countries with a strong military tradition, such as Germany, tended to follow military models more closely, while in England a widespread fear of military influence reduced the tendency to adopt military precepts in all parts of the British Isles, apart from Ireland. In German, French, and many other continental forces a military background was either a prerequisite or a preference for enrollment, and military weapons were commonly used, whereas many police administrators in England were reluctant to recruit ex-soldiers, firearms were deployed only under special circumstances, and a gendarmerie type of police was never created.

POLICING IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

Significantly, despite the reduction in police functions on the Continent and the legal constraints within which they increasingly operated, the police continued to grow and considerably strengthen their position and status during the twentieth century. They attained ultimate power after World War I in one-party states, whether fascist or communist, where they were unrestricted by law or tenets of public accountability. Totalitarian regimes, in particular, showed an obsessive reliance on both the secret and uniformed police to monitor the life of the people, ruthlessly suppress dissidence, and detain anyone considered an enemy of the regime. Some historians now claim that the numerical strength and intrusiveness of the police were greater in communist countries than in Nazi Germany and that state security institutions under the tsars were less coercive than under the Soviet regime. Studies have also shown that for all the terrorism perpetrated by the Gestapo and Soviet security forces, their efficiency depended to no small degree on collaboration and denunciations from the citizenry. Apparently, not only in nontotalitarian societies do the police need public cooperation.

By virtue of their wide dispersion, size, activities, and formal organization, the police everywhere served as vehicles of state expansion. Yet developments in Europe in the twentieth century highlight the complex relationship between the state and its law enforcement apparatus. While instances of police resistance to the rise of nondemocratic regimes have been recorded, police complicity was more prevalent. The same was true in areas under foreign occupation. Such responses indicate that the forces of law and order were not monolithic and not necessarily persistently loyal to the state they served, but followed their own inclinations. The tenuous support that the Weimar police (and army) extended to democratic Germany provides further proof of the ambiguous political role and attitude of some police forces.

Despite the cold war after World War II, the inhabitants of Western Europe on the whole enjoyed a growing liberalization of police practices. One manifestation of this was the gradual coopting of women to this male-dominated occupation. At the same time, police forces became more technically complex organizations. Cars and electronic equipment made it possible to offer quicker service, be more accessible to the public, and perfect the means of social control without seeming coercive. Communication devices also facilitated better supervision of subordinates by their officers. Indeed, by the end of the twentieth century the workings of the police had become much more controlled and subject to bureaucratic intervention. There was also a shift toward proactive techniques of law enforcement involving greater emphasis on surveillance by means of acquiring detailed knowledge of the population. Crime investigation has always taken up only a small proportion of the policeman's time (apart from detectives, of course). Now more than ever law enforcers—even patrol officers—engage in the processing of knowledge by writing reports, undertaking administrative duties, and collecting and sorting information. The use of computer technology for data storage, retrieval, and analysis has further enhanced the surveillance capacities of the police.

These intangible interventionist measures are currently causing grave concern in the liberal democracies of Europe. However, this is but one topic in the broader debate over the role of police in society, which includes such contentious issues as police accountability, selective enforcement, discriminatory policing of minority groups, and the question of officers' discretion. Beyond these concerns, the police figure prominently in public discourse, as reflected in the preoccupation of the mass media with the agencies of law enforcement. The interest in police and policing is no less extensive among academics of diverse disciplines. As part of the growing attention to crime and the criminal justice system among social historians during the 1970s, the police became a major field of scholarship. Since then, these historians have offered varied perspectives on how patterns of law enforcement were shaped by changing historical processes. Placing the police within a broad socioeconomic context, they emphasize the role the police play in mediating between centers of power and all areas of life. The police are seen as a social control mechanism, and their development is analyzed against wider strategies of power in society. The social history of the police thus affords insight into the machinery of government at various levels and its impact on ordinary people. A significant contribution relates to the ways that police have historically interacted with and reinforced social and cultural norms. Since the police have dealings not only with offenders but with the population at large, studies of the police facilitate a deeper understanding of collective mentalities and of the life of the nonprivileged sectors of society. Also instructive is the focus on the police as an independent agency with its own motivations and interests. During the 1990s scholarship shed light on the policeman as a worker and the ruling police elite as an employer. By combining high politics with history from below, social historians of the police have succeeded in broadening our horizons on the social dimensions of the past while at the same time enriching our appreciation of domestic politics.

See alsoStreet Life and City Space (volume 2);Absolutism (volume 2);The Reformation of Popular Culture (volume 5);Festivals (volume 5); and other articles in this section.

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