American Policing In The 18th Century

American policing began around the 17th century. The Northern colonies of the United States were focused on the watch. They had started to institute a Civil Law Enforcement System very similar to the English model. The Southern colonies were focused on slave patrols and codes. The American Colonists were focused on a lot in this time period. They were constantly thinking about the foreign enemies they had, the Native Americans and other threats they faced on a day to day basis.

In the Northern Colonies they had sheriffs which were like the English thief-takers. Sheriffs weren’t those who patrolled, they mostly stayed in their office. In addition they would collect taxes, supervise elections and had a huge impact and influence on the legal

In the South it was up to the citizens to protect one another from the crime and criminals in the Southern Colonies. The South wasn’t nearly as organized as the north. When a serious action took place the people of the South took matters into their own hands. Which led to the numerous amounts of lynching and vigilantism, that fact became tradition. The South had slave patrols, they were a formal system of social control. Slave patrols were police type organization that were created in the American South that controlled slaves to avoid conflict. They supported the Southern economic system of

From the years 1790-1845 New York City’s population grew drastically from 33,000 people to 370,000 people due to all the new immigrants. With such an increase in population the crime and poverty got worse and was increasing. Due to the massive amounts of migration to the large American cities social problems began to rise, becoming more abrupt due to the poverty and discrimination. Americans response to the problems was the creation of early police departments. The formal police departments were created using the Peelian Model.

The first organized police department was creating in 1838 in Boston, it only consisted of 8 workers. They only worked during the daytime, then in 1851 they began to work at night as well. In 1853 the position of a police chief was created following the creation of police stations in 1854. The role of a police officer in the 18th and 19th century was not always pertaining to law enforcement. They sometimes cleaned the streets, cared for the poor, helped the homeless, operated the emergency ambulances and were assigned to other social services as