Origins of the police | Hacker News Reader

Origins of the police

worxintheory.wordpress.com

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I heard that the British developed the police as we know it today, as a response to private security forces. Read up on "thief-takers", celebrity thief-taker Jonathan Wild and the Macdaniel affair. That scandal was too big to ignore, and public security was finally put under the auspices of the government.

Somehow Libertarian circles manage to ignore this history lesson and expect that this time around private police and the attendant power imbalance won't lead to entrenched corruption.

The etymology of the word "police" supports your British security forces notion (with the addition of the Marine aspect):

http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?&search=police police (n.) c.1530, at first essentially the same word as policy (n.1); from Middle French police (late 15c.), from Latin politia "civil administration," from Greek polis "city" (see polis). Until mid-19c. used in England for "civil administration;" application to "administration of public order" (1716) is from French (late 17c.), and originally in English referred to France or other foreign nations. The first force so-named in England was the Marine Police, set up 1798 to protect merchandise at the Port of London.

To defend the privatization on consequentialist grounds, one doesn't have to believe it won't lead to entrenched corruption; just that it'll lead to less corruption that the public system.

The timeline doesn't support this novel historical theory. Wild was executed in 1725, and the McDaniels were convicted in 1756. Metropolitan police forces weren't set up until the 1820s and 1830s. Did the theory you heard have any explanation for the 100-year gap between the scourge of "private security" (pretending for the sake of discussion that the thief-takers were in any sense similar to that) and creation of the police?

One might be tempted to comment on the irony of your chiding "Libertarians" [NB: TFA is of unionist if not Marxist perspective] for their poor history, if one were not distracted by the implication that "entrenched corruption" is a rarity in the current regime.

Actually, the timeline does support the theory. The historical nucleus of the Metropolitan Police is the force organized by Henry Fielding, in the 1750s, when the Wild scandal was still on everyone's minds. That provided a template, and the growth of London in the late 18th/early 19th century meant that local forces were unable to keep up. In 1830 or thereabouts the local constabularies were amalgamated into the Met.

As for the corruption bit, with private security forces we know the weakness from the historical example already. With public police, public oversight puts a limit on corruption, at least in theory. Certainly London saw an improvement with the government providing police service.

That theory seems to be rather sketchy in practice.

Government police forces are policed by the government.

Private police forces are also policed by the government, but since they're different organizations, perhaps in reality it would be better.

I know nothing about this particular topic, but my first reaction was to find this statement highly suspect and at best full of exaggeration: "The historical nucleus of the Metropolitan Police is the force organized by Henry Fielding, in the 1750s, when the Wild scandal was still on everyone's minds"

30 years is a long time. Is Iran-Contra still on everyone's minds when it comes to discussions over geopolitics? I suppose it's still a factor.

Iran-Contra was a damp squib. What happens if you replace it with e.g. "Nixon"?

Seriously? These days, the public consciousness routinely loses track of major issues within days or weeks. We're already forgetting the major lessons of the last decade (re: renewed war fervor and attacks on civil rights over ISIS). 40+ years ago is ancient history politically.

I don't think the timescale was the same in 18th century England, but we're still talking about a generation-level gap here--I don't think you could just automatically assume a connection without some evidence.

Public consciousness routinely loses track of major issues within days or weeks, as a result of mass media and entertainment. Once the television and radio were invented, people's focus started shifting to the here and now, be it the news or their favourite programme on TV. One can't really say the same for the late 1700's! That's my take on it, at least

We already have private police forces. (security guards, police in private communities, etc.) On a different note, we also have privatized prisons. With re prisons people tend to not like them because of the incentive to keep people locked up. I don't see how privatized police forces would escape the same kind of criticism.

All types of prison systems have that incentive. Just because government prisons are non-profit entities doesn't mean the people running them don't make out like bandits. I've read that the California prison guard union is politically very powerful.

Private police, though ... in an era where early death is relatively uncommon vs. omnipresent, what's their incentive to take risks beyond what they're paid for? That what can be problematic, there's many reasons self-help is outlawed, but in the examples you give there's no immediately obvious problem.

I think the issue with regard to privatized prisons (and perhaps would-be privatized police) is that there's a profit motive. A need to keep profits up. Whereas public prisons can take the hit --ie. the losses are incurred by state coffers. A private corp can't take that economic hit as well.

The customer of privatized police forces is you, the end user, which is why there is healthy competition and relatively few "incidents."

The customer of the privatized prison is not you but the state. As a result, they compete with each other to do the best "prisoning" (ie punishing bs rehabilitation, using them as almost-slave labor) for thirst cost. If you were the customer, (as in you directly picked your prison provider), the incentives would be much different: http://youtube.com/watch?v=SzYJYSm-MfI

I think the reason there are fewer 'incidents' as you put it, is that private forces are wont to escalate issues to state police forces. Some private security have severe restrictions on when they may or may not fire their firearms --due to not having the same immunity (indemnification) as state police forces.

The video presenter presumes people will follow rules --even violent people will follow rules --what force is going to enforce those rules 'not being on someone's property', for example. And unless all communities are run similarly, this will create 'outcasts'. Bad actors would just find another place to lay low.

Jonathan Wild: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Wild

Thanks for the pointer. The Wikipedia text seems way more of a movie script (daring escape after daring escape (if I had to guess, most of them involving bribes), tickets sold to a hanging, etc) than the very loose adaptation at http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0065209/, but I guess the movie makers wanted a happy ending.

Maybe the director of Game of Thrones should have a go at this story?

If I'm reading the thesis correctly the modern state top to bottom monopoly on mechanisms of enforcement of common law is a consequence of population growth as it applies to two things, (1) crowd control and (2) attitudes towards methods of crowd control.

But there seem to be holes. Unruly armies of tens of thousands have existed since antiquity as insurrections, unrest due to demands for change, and borderline rebellions. The ruling classes of the Roman empire had to deal with this sort of thing on a regular basis. The size of the mob is not a new thing.

I think the change between old and new enforcement of common law has a lot more to do with technology, specifically the development of firearms and their ability to enable a small armed group to defeat a large unarmed group. That changed the whole nature of insurrection and civil disorder. You'll see that the advent of the police came right around the time at which firearms moved beyond the crude, slow weapons of the Napoleonic era. I don't think that is a coincidence.

You raise a good point about Rome. The patron/client model seemed to keep the social peace for quite a while. Not unlike the social welfare system that is described in the article. Additionally, I think the development of firearms and cheap/easy to use weapons actually had the opposite effect that you propose.

Specifically, the development of firearms led to a profound expansion of the democratization of violence. This is the meaning of the quote, "God made Man but Sam Colt made them equal."

Indeed, it wasn't the high technology that was important but how that technology reduced the need to invest our only truly scarce resource, time, in order to kill.

Pick up a gun, of almost any kind and in minutes you will be able to kill a similarly armed opponent. Now try the same thing with a bow and arrow or a sword (or more commonly a spear).

Pick up a gun, of almost any kind and in minutes you will be able to kill a similarly armed opponent. Now try the same thing with a bow and arrow or a sword (or more commonly a spear).

I guess I understand this sentiment, but as someone who has shot many rounds, many arrows, and also played kendo for years, it just seems wrong. Guns are more powerful than the other weapons, but that extra power doesn't mean one can't shoot and miss. (It also doesn't mean one can't intend not to harm oneself or others, and then fail in that intention, but if you don't own or use firearms you don't need to worry about that.)

If you have a gun, you can kill on a whim. If you're skilled with a gun, you can kill on a whim, reliably. It is just like a bow and arrows, in that respect.

If you have a melee weapon, you can kill if you really mean to do so. If you're skilled with a melee weapon, you can kill if you really mean to do so, reliably.

The real power is in how easy it is to 'activate' the weapon.

A gun requires, what, a few dozen PSI on a trigger that most anyone can activate and the power you get out of it is the same regardless of who (or what) activated the trigger.

A bow and arrow requires some knowledge about how to use it and enough strength and coordination to fire it. Same with a sword, except you also have to be within feet of the target.

One other thing to factor in is the development of low maintenance firearms. That required the development of smokeless powder in the end of the 19th Century and "non-corrosive" primers in the 20th Century, although per Wikipedia it appears that mercury fulminate is non-corrosive but not as shelf/environmentally stable as the corrosive compounds.

Non-corrosive primers were state of the art in 1911 when the Swiss adopted them in their service ammo, but widespread adoption in the US was probably post-WWII. (The Soviets addressed this by among other measures chroming the important surfaces of the AK-47.)

So nowadays, unless you're using old surplus ammo, likely for a rifle, a gun is going to stay functional for many shots with little or no maintenance (like 100s). Thereby providing a lower threshold for the discipline required to employ one.

In the middle ages, peasant rebellions were dealt with by massacring the insurgents. The problem was that assembling a force to deal with a group could take a while, during which the poor had the run of the town. Smaller armed groups could also roam the countryside, and getting a force to hunt them down took long enough that they would be gone by the time it was assembled.

With an organized, professional force, you almost always have enough men on hand to deal with disturbances small and large. Part of the promise of a modern police force is that however well-armed you are, you can't win in the end: they'll always be able to call more reinforcement.

One funny thing is that you now have a bunch of idle police officers, who don't really have anything useful to do from day to day. So you use them to harass poor people, because, hey, why not?

This is an interesting, if fairly, Marxist, view. I wonder though if there is much thought given to the restructuring and unification of the ruling classes which happened during the Reformation in much of Europe (where instead of a hodge-podge of independent cities, lords, royalty, and church men often both cooperating and at odds, one ended up with a supremacy developing in the hands of factory owners, coupled with a very sympathetic and now highly developed absolute monarchy). In other words, one thing that made Capitalism quite a bit worse than Feudalism (Marx being blind to this fact) was that power was far more consolidated in the former, and so the lower classes had fewer options in navigating the power relationships.

What is the alternative to this sort of inequality? I would argue that open source begins to show a way, insofar as effectively the worker as individual owns the means of production (owns, meaning here, "has the right to utilize or direct utilization of"). This sort of commons development has been shown successful in many other areas, including manufacturing (google "Emilia-Romagna Manufacturing").

It isn't Capitalism if everyone is a Capitalist (i.e. has the capital to start his or her own business).

'I would argue that open source begins to show a way, insofar as effectively the worker as individual owns the means of production (owns, meaning here, "has the right to utilize or direct utilization of").'

I would recommend reading up on the Cooperative movement, if you haven't.

'google "Emilia-Romagna Manufacturing"'

I did, but I'm not sure I'm getting relevant results. Could you expand on this?

I am familiar with the Cooperative movement.

Regarding manufacturing in the Emilia-Romagna region of Italy, it tends to be based on the same sorts of informal collectives that open source utilizes, but in heavy manufacturing with many small shops working together on specific projects to compete with large manufacturing firms.

The model is very successful there and it allows for large numbers of small businesses to take on big businesses by working cooperatively.

Another view I've seen recently, it covers the same time period as the parent article.

http://historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/willmodpol.html

A worthy contribution to this conversation would be Michel Foucault's Discipline and Punish.

While it mostly focuses on the history of the Western penal system it also discusses the history of punishment and torture.

It's a dense book but the first few pages alone are riveting enough to inspire one to continue.

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