A brief history of policing

Abstract

We live within institutional arrangements which influence our ways of thinking and responding to the world around us. Those institutions often seem part of the natural order of things – necessary and immovable, defining particular social artefacts as problems and predefining the range of possible responses, reforms, and solutions. The institution of policing is no exception, and its historical weight carries us along well-trodden paths. Instrumental arguments by policymakers, politicians, and police administrators reconfirm the necessity of the police to control crime and to uphold the law, even as a wealth of evidence throws into question the basic claims of these assertions. Indeed, the problems of police violence, ineffectiveness and corruption are as old as the institution of policing itself. It is important to recognise that policing is a socio-historical process that maintains itself for reasons other than controlling crime. The history of policing tells us much about the control and maintenance of social divisions including class, race, gender, disability, and their intersections and about the economic exploitation of labour and political control. The history of policing also alerts us to the use of power, both at the local level and more broadly through macro socio-historical movements of colonialism and imperialism. The history of colonial policing is important to understanding contemporary calls to Defund the Police.