Self-Policing and the Policing of the Self: Violence, Protection and the Civilizing Bargain in Britain

Abstract

In Britain, recent years have seen increasing criticism of police ineffectiveness, high-profile incidents of vigilantism and interest in alternatives to traditional policing. In light of these trends, this article first considers nineteenth-century community «self-policing», which ordered social relations according to a more diffuse distribution of acceptable violence. Second, it addresses the expansion of the state monopoly on violence and its accompanying expectation of more elaborate individual self-control, a «policing of the self.» Third, it suggests ways that the civilizing process can, in certain contexts, generate tensions if this «civilizing bargain» – exchanging self-policing for state protection – fails to meet community expectations.