Devoid of the Domestic: Inside the Mind of a Victorian Policeman
“For many early Victorians, policing was a new and low-status occupation. Few men became policeman for positive reasons" (Taylor 49).
Construction of the Typical Police Officer
Several criteria apply to the Victorian police officer:
* Policemen were typically involved in trade and were part of the lower middle class
o “In Staffordshire, miners, shoemakers, brickmakers, moulders, puddlers, potters, engine drivers and even a printer joined the force” (Taylor 48).
o The occupational background of the police officer, while quite diverse, composed of a large portion of agricultural laborers (48). This is due to industrialization and mechanization of agriculture during the Victorian Era; fewer rural laborers were needed.
* Policemen were typically young: “In the Metropolitan Police the mean age of recruits fell to twenty-four in 1850” (Taylor 49).
* Policemen were typically single: “Many forces quite explicitly stated in their recuiting campaigns that married men need n...
Officers were rewarded and reprimanded appropriately for the amount of arrests that were made. When Officers successfully prevented or deterred crime it didn’t show on paper. This tied in with officer morale in a big way. The book illustrates that when departments put out arrest quotas for the east side arrests fell, usually to the minimum. Mosko is often very critical of upper police managements distance and ignorance to the actual problems out there.
The population grew and ‘breakdown in law and order marched in step with the industrial revolution’ (Critchley, 1978: 21). The industrial revolution meant technological progression, better education and an increase in capital stock. As a result, the population grew, with more new people moving into the area, meaning there was less informal social control. Due to these factors, 1829 saw the introduction of the ‘New Police’ to London, the Metropolitan Police were brought in to solve the issue of crime and disorder. The poor initially feared that the introduction of the Metropolitan police would mean that they would be controlled and oppressed by the powerful to a much larger extent. By the same token, the orthodox view is that the old system was failing and that this was an effective step that had to be taken in order to respond to the diversity of this more cultured society. The working class were content as the New Police looked out for their welfare Melville Lee (1901: xxx) claimed that the New Police were ‘guardians of the weak against the strong […] designed to stand between the powerful and the weak, to prevent oppression, danger and crime’. In contrast, the revisionist view is that the New Police were necessary to cope with the needs of the modern capital class. Although, at first the New Police were treated with great hostility by everyone within society, somewhat
The history of the police department is in 1854 they only had a single lawman which was a marshal they didn’t have a jail so they shared one with a neighboring town.
However the police force gradually improved due to one reason, men wanting to join the force was increasing. The increase was many because unemployment was high and the desire for financial security. Furthermore men were eager to join the force as it recognised as a respectable career, something that cannot have been easy to earn in East End of London.
-This harshness was probably due to the lack of real paid policemen at the time.
The first police department in America developed in New York and began the first era of policing which spanned from the 1830s to 1900 and is known as the political era (Walker & Katz, 2012). As emphasized by Walker (1999) not only did the political era of policing revolve around politics but provided officers with little to no training, education or recruitment standards (as cited in Police: History, 2014). The era also forced shaky job security for law enforcement and officers could be fired and hired at any point with little to no reason. Even men with criminal records were foot patrolling and women were only seen as “matrons” for the jail; they did not carry weapons and often times had very little arrest discretion (Walker & Katz, 2012). According to Walker and Katz (2012), “a $300 payment to the Tammany Hall poli...
Both of these articles were focused on the Strategy of Policing, but the author’s approaches to the ‘hot topics,’ couldn’t be more difficult. Williams and Murphy focused on the different eras of policing, and how the racial conflicts have overlapped policing efforts. Whereas, Kelling and Moore focused on how police have evolved with the eras. The articles were dramatically different, however, the policing eras: Political, Reform, and Community Orientated eras were influenced largely as the main focuses for each academic article.
The word culture means a group of people sharing the same beliefs, values, knowledge and behavior. The culture of policemen evolved as with the development of policing. Policeman is individuals empowered by the state to enforce law, serve and protect. The word police have a history from a Greek word called politeia. The word politeia in Greek was used to refer to dealings that affected the stability and safety of the Greek State. In the 18 century the word “police” were taken from the French and brought into the English language. King Louis XlV organized the first central police force in 1667 to police Paris, because back then Paris was the largest city in Europe. August “Gus” Vollmer was known as the father of policing because he started the first school, where officers could learn the law of evidence. In 1905 August became the first chief in Berkeley, California. He also was the first chief to tell his department to use the lie detector. August Vollmer was the first American officer to incorporate the use of blood, fiber, and analysis in a criminal investigation. Technology in policing began to advance in the 1800’s. DNA was discovered 1868, and in 1882 Alphonse Bertillon used anthropometrics as a mean of identification. As years past they continue advancing in policing. How policing is run now and how it was ran in the early years are totally different. Strict laws and consequences are put into place, and by then there was any. All these things affect police culture, and that’s what makes culture of policing different then the culture of policing in the early years.
It is a myth to believe that an officers job is spend fighting dangerous crimes, in reality officers spend more time handing smaller cases. For example, police officers spend a lot of time doing daily tasks such as giving speeding tickets and being mediators in disputes (Kappeler & Potter, 2005). Handing out speeding tickers and handling minor disputes are far from fighting crime. Police officers spend more time doing preventive measures (Kappeler & Potter, 2005). Preventive measures involve officers intervening to prevent further altercations. Victor Kappeler and Gary Potter discussed the myth of crime fighting as invalid and misleading notions of an officer’s employment.
The Gestapo policemen were chosen based on what skills they acquired and what ranking they were trying to be in. Lower ranks did not need as much party loyalty as the higher ranks. However, technocratic, bureaucratic, and police skills were highly valued when choosing these men (“Gestapo”). Many men were not chosen to be a part of the Gestapo because overall, it was only made up of 40,000 people, which included office and clothing personnel.
This paper will show four different police departments that are currently hiring or recruiting for police officers. There will be a summary on the research found on the process used to recruit police officers. It will also show their current hiring trends and what hiring practices they have that are successful or not successful. The paper will also go over the different methods departments use to train their new officers and their values.
Even with the increased training and accountability that came with the Peelian model of policing, the next sixty years of policing were dominated by politics. Policing was one large part of the political patronage system, a system where political candidates would reward those citizens who provided support during the election (Roberg et al. 2012). After elections, public officials rewarded individuals by providing them with police jobs. As a result of political pressure, the police were now used as a tool in the political machine’s fight to maintain control (Roberg et al. 2012). The character of police departments would frequently change after every new election.
It is both a result and a cause of police isolation from the larger society and of police solidarity. Its influence begins early in the new officer’s career when he is told by more experienced officers that the “training given in police academies is irrelevant to ‘real’ police work”. What is relevant, recruits are told, is the experience of senior officers who know the ropes or know how to get around things. Recruits are often told by officers with considerable experience to forget what they learned in the academy and in college and to start learning real police work as soon as they get to their Field Training Officers. Among the first lessons learned are that police officers share secrets among themselves and that those secrets especially when they deal with activities that are questionable in terms of ethics, legality, and departmental policy, are not to be told to others. They also are told that administrators and Internal Affairs officers cannot often be trusted. This emphasis on the police occupational subculture results in many officers regarding themselves as members of a “blue
In the past, policing and women were never associated with each other. Policing was a male dominated profession which women were not welcomed to join. However, these biases and unfair beliefs that women were not welcomed in the police force began to change slowly. In the nineteen tens and twenties woman began to be employed by the police forces. Women's social groups began to lobby that women should be able to be employed by police forces. With all of the support groups that women were involved in, pressure began to mount for there to be a representation of women in male dominated police forces.
Women have struggled since the 1800’s to have a career in law enforcement and to be treated with the same respect as male officers. The early history of police women consisted of social service, in which women had to meet high standards for police employment, but received lower wages, were restricted to a special unit or bureau, and were assigned to clerical, juvenile, guard duty and vice work. (Price2002)