The Scope of Policing

This chapter explores the urban police role in the nineteenth century, examining what the police did and how they were deployed in the city. It details how both the ‘old’ and the ‘new’ police were given an ‘omnibus mandate’, covering crime control, urban order, sanitation, and public safety. Police statistics reveal that police interventions were far more common for minor, impersonal, regulatory offences than for more serious, personal crimes of theft and violence. Hence, rather than specialist crime-fighting agencies, nineteenth-century police forces were key institutions of urban improvement. Furthermore, the chapter illuminates the strategy of preventative policing, revealing the geography and temporality of patrol, the tactics of police surveillance, and the broad powers of arrest with which they were entrusted.

Community policing · Crime control · Criminal justice · Criminology · Mandate · Political science · Scope (computer science) · Sociology · Temporality · Colonialism, slavery, and trade · European history and politics · Historical Economic and Social Studies · Law · Public Administration