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History of policing in the United States
The evolution of policing
Historical development of police agencies and their jurisdiction
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Recommended: History of policing in the United States
Have you ever wondered what it is like to be a law enforcement officer? Most people imagine driving fast and running after the “bad guys”. While this is one part of many law enforcement careers, there are many other things that law enforcement officers do in their daily duties. While law enforcement is an exciting career, officers must be able to face dangerous situations daily, be organized, have good writing skills and work well with high stress situations.
One of the first attempts at law enforcement began in 1692, an act known as the highway act was taking place. The highway act provided rewards to anyone who captured a criminal. In the 1600’s, crime spreads through city of England. There was a group of investigators called the “Bow Street Runners” and they went to major crime scenes to see if they could figure out what happened. With the success of the Bow Street Runners, the government started paying people to be law enforcers. (2)
When people first started coming to America from England. The Europeans found it strange that the Native Americans lived off of 1 rule, survival. The Europeans had done all they could do to get ready to protect themselves from people who didn’t want to share land. So any man available including young boys started patrolling to keep the rest safe. "Police History." Police History. N.p., n.d. Web. 03 Nov. 2013. http://www.aphf.org/hist.html
After Europeans got settled to maintain order they left the justices of peace in control of laws. But once they started towns started getting larger they rapidly figured out that leaving them in charge was not going to be enough to maintain order. This is when they came up with the idea of organizing areas and paying people to enforce the laws. In 1636 Boston...
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...a good way to enforce the laws in places that have a large population that it was not possible for everyone to know where everyone else is. Informal method is what law enforcer’s use now and by using this type of law enforcement they have to implies all laws to everyone.
Works Cited
Gibaldi, Joseph. MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers. 6th ed. New York: MLA, 2003.
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The job of a law enforcement officer sometimes can be tough. Officer are sometimes plagued with situation that test their ability to enforce the law and maintain order. Police officers today face a constant battle to maintain higher ethical standards. This mission becomes tougher each day when one considers the importance of fighting terrorism, drugs, human trafficking,
...rbing] the peace of citizens... gambling... [keeping] a house of prostitution... [riding] a horse... [faster] than 6 miles per hour”, it does suggest that such laws were necessary to keep citizens in line (Document F). Maybe these laws were put in place because a lot of these crimes were happening regularly. An example of this is Anna Brewster. In the claimed peaceful story of Anna Brewster, although she was treated well by the Native Americans, she was “recaptured” and she “fought hard”. These quotes imply that there must have been a lot of conflicts between Native Americans and American settlers (Document K).
were to patrol the streets to keep them in order and to try to prevent
American policing originated from early English law and is profoundly influenced by its history. Early law enforcement in England took on two forms of policing, one of which heavily influenced modern policing and it is known as the watch (Potter, 2013). The watch consisted, at first, of volunteers which had to patrol the streets for any kind of disorder including crime and fire. After men attempted to get out of volunteering by paying others, it became a paid professional position (Walker & Katz, 2012). The three eras of policing in America are shaped by these early ideas and practices of law enforcement. Throughout time, sufficient improvements and advancements have been made from the political era to the professional era and finally the community era which attempts to eliminate corruption, hire qualified officers and create an overall effective law enforcement system.
The modern police agencies have grown and developed since the early 1600s to become an increasingly organized group that endeavors to prevent crime while preserving the rights and professionalism of citizens. Generally, modern policing in the United has been shaped by the early English police styles (“The History of the Police”, n.d.). This is primarily because the first organized policing agencies were witnessed in the early 1800s but exper...
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Author’s last name, first name. “Title of Online Article.” Title of Online Publication Version (Year Published): Pages. Date Accessed .
Lunsford, Andrea A. “MLA Format for In-text Citations.” The St. Martin’s Handbook. Fifth Edition. Bedford/St. Martin’s. 20 July 2008. .
The status of the criminal justice system in Europe during the 1700s was the product of long tradition of aristocracy. An aristocracy government is one in which land is owned by particular families and is passed down through the generations of a family line. The monarch of the region grants titles and powers to the privileged classes, who in return keep order within their land and swear loyalty to the monarch. Property and power in an aristocracy were the privileges of birth alone and being merit was simply irrelevant. Their lives circled around maintaining, while attempting to expand, their wealth and power. Historically, as a higher class among others, aristocrats were known to be negligent towards the poor. To where they were prone to appoint
Organizational structure of Law Enforcement agencies of any state is being built in accordance with the functions, entrusted to the police. In turn, functions that are performed by the law enforcements in different states largely evolved historically and are usually formed due to the peculiarities of national, social and political development of a particular State, the traditions of its society. I paid my attention to the most interesting, in my opinion, histories of Law Enforcement systems – in America and Europe, in particular, France.
Early English law had many influences on law enforcement in the United States of American during the 1600s-1800s. The riot act of 1714 which was an act of Parliament for Great Britain where the local authorities in that community would choose a group of people to keep order and call the military if a fight or riot got out of hand. “The government had no civil police force to deal with mob violence therefore the government had to call in the military using the riot act to control the situation.’ (Hess, 2013; p. 10). As the law enforcement evolved urbanization turned into commerce and industry. Meanwhile in the early system of the law the watch and ward system but eventually seemed to be non-effective.
Since English colonizers were the first to establish an extravagant, European society in North America, it is unsurprising that many of the aspects of the American administration of justice stemmed from its mother country. In England, law enforcement was an unorganized mess until the year 1200 (Schmalleger 137). The police system remained static from 1285 to 1829, until when Sir Robert Peel instituted the modern police force (Schmalleger 139). However, early American law enforcement was bound to be different, due to the differences of American and English life and environment. In the beginning of the colonial law enforcement, towns and cities inaugurated versions of the English day ward and night watch, but these processes did not remain in place for long (Schmalleger 139).
Bibliography:(sorry, I did this paper a while ago and I didn't have to do a bibliography so not really sure)
Law enforcement is an important element of the United States’ system of criminal justice apart from the corrections and the courts. It is one of the major functions of the various governmental agencies of police. It is therefore concerned with police service or functions of police departments. In this paper, the author analyzes at law enforcement and related issues. Specifically, the author discusses law enforcement, theoretical understanding of the different models of policing as well as policing styles. The author also looks at the question of stress associated with the life of a police officer and how such stress affects them. This is a purely theoretical discussion based on secondary sources of information. Time and resources constraints could not allow for a more empirical, experimental fieldwork research. The materials relied upon are mainly journal articles from respectable academic journals and databases.
Throughout the history of America there has been a form of law enforcement present. In the 1600’s, watchmen and constables were the law enforcement officer. These positions were voluntary, and sometimes even obligatory. As time progressed law enforcement became much more time consuming and dangerous. This created the need for a twenty-four hour police force. In 1833 Philadelphia created the first twenty-four hour police department dedicated to prevention of crime and apprehension of criminals. Soon after Philadelphia created their police department, Boston and New York followed.