NCJ Number
138808
Date Published
1992
Length
29 pages
Annotation
This historical view of urban police emphasizes the social and political innovation represented in policing and that the fundamental aspect of U.S. policing as a component of local government has made police a part of urban services.
Abstract
In the context of its historical perspective, the essay identifies new research publications which focus on police as employers, examines police relations with organized labor, addresses those issues in police reform that have attracted historical research, and considers policy issues in terms of a Federal political system. Police in the United States grew in per capita strength from the middle of the 19th Century until the first decade of the 20th Century when they realized their current strength. Four important innovative features of the new police emerge in the United States in the 19th Century: a hierarchical organization with a command and communications structure resembling the military; increasing functional differentiation in revised city governments which located the police in the executive rather than the judicial branch; uniforms which made the police visible, hence accessible, to all; and a conception of the police as active. Toward the end of the 19th Century, the police began to focus more narrowly on crime control thus diminishing the range of social services they provided which included the overnight housing of thousands of homeless persons. 100 references