Ordering the city: surveillance, public space and the reform of urban policing in England 1835–56

Abstract

This paper questions those interpretations of 19th century police reform which seek to explain its incidence and intensity through the lens of economic relations. Through a critical reading of the work of Anthony Giddens and Michael Mann it replaces the concern with the quantitative features of the post-1835 provincial police forces with a sustained consideration of the changes in the organization of policing based on the idea of ‘surveillance’. From this it is argued that police reform in this period involved transformations in the deployment of policemen across space and in the definition of administrative hierarchies (involving the organization of information and supervision). It also meant changes in the conception of public space. Applying this framework to the example of the Portsmouth Borough police it is demonstrated that, despite the lack of substantial industrial change, this provincial police force had been significantly transformed in the period before 1856 through a series of locally initiated reforms. It is concluded that the specific nature of police reform must be understood as part of a historical geography of state formation which theorizes states at all levels in terms of the administrative power they deploy.