The Police Force Constitutes, Research Paper Example

In contemporary times, the police force constitutes one of the several institutions of state, which has among other things the stipulated mandate to ensure the maintenance of civil order through law enforcement and the protection of people and properties (Walker, 1977). Congruent to the conduct of policing over the years is the legitimized resort to the use of a reasonable amount of force to achieve any of the statutory obligations it is mandated to discharge. For historical purposes it is worth stating that the generic root of the name and process of policing (Politia) is of a Latin origin which refers to the act of carrying out civil administration (Neocleous, 2004). The police institution currently has an array of names and terms used to refer to it either in direct terms or indirect ways, depending on what their legal and political undercurrents stipulates. Here are a few examples of different names used to describe the police: troopers, sheriffs, law enforcement, militisia and what have you.

Like most institutions of state in our day and age, policing has gone through several evolutions before assuming the form and activities it carries out, especially in developed countries. This essay will therefore be taking a critical retrospective look at the various levels and influencing factors that have shaped the kind of policing in active use in most parts of the world today. Needless to say that the basic premise underlining this posture is the presumption that ideally, notwithstanding the level of sociopolitical or demographic considerations almost every nation-state has some form of civil control structure with semblance to policing. Within this light the fundamental goals of this paper will thus built and achieved along this understanding.

Without getting into the rudimentary facets of the policing process at this early stage of this essay, suffice to acknowledge that as far as the latter parts of the seventeenth century spanning into some parts of the nineteenth century, the evolution of social stratification prompted the need for corresponding measures by members of the so-called elite class to perpetuate or consolidate their special interests, thus motivating them to recruit and empower groups to defend and safeguard their private property(Siegel, 2005). Stated differently, the advent of aristocratic desire to maintain control over private estate to a very considerable degree can be attributed to the first ever known organized maintenance of civil order. Notable among the pundits of private policing operations is the Anglo-Saxon system of tithing. Basically, the nobles had the constables oversee the process of maintaining civility and order on their estate. Recruited constables working for the nobles could be working under compulsion or sometimes receive meager compensations for the services rendered.

The evolution of policing systems in the Chinese east has some degree of similarity with the aristocratic offshoot described in the preceding paragraph. In contrast to the western etymology of policing systems established to perpetuate the special interest of private individuals, the policing system that emerged from the far east were remarkably public driven, meaning that public authorities or whatever the form of governance in place at that time fundamentally oversaw the establishment of a police entity with the view of serving the public interest (Broder, et al 1992). According to (Neocleous, 2004)) ancient China is on record to have pioneered the use of a kind of law enforcement recruitment process called the selection of “prefects.” The prefects were recruited to serve on a contractual term still imbued with all the attributes of a conventional police system. The modus operandi of these prefects were specifically required to align with the standard political authority of the day. In other words, they were not an autonomous entity largely because they owed allegiance to the governance hierarchy of the day. The Chinese prefectural law enforcement system in many ways is a microcosm of what is known and practiced in our day and age by conventional policing standards. By dint of the ability of the ancient Chinese prefecture system in achieving considerable degree of social order, tranquility and respite, the system was soon to spread to neighboring regions within the Asia Pacific. Eventually, it became the standard prototype of policing system, with expressive significant relays in conventional policing practices.

Like the Chinese system of creating a police force that has a tentative mandate to offer service to the public, the Greek empire are also known to have operated a similar policing service mandated to offer service to the public. Unlike the Chinese system of using recruited prefects to run the police service, the Greek were known to typically use non-private slaves to carry out every form of public law enforcement processes traditionally associated with the modern police structure (Hunter, 1994). The Romans known for their vested confidence in militarization used the army to carry out the process of maintaining law and order. Effectively, the Romans had no standard police system judging by the fact that the army virtually carried out such functions. It should be noted that the use of the army in maintaining civil law and order was conspicuously practiced outside the territory of Rome proper. A group known as the “urban cohorts” essentially provided the service of maintaining law and order in the city, with additional extended capacities to other citizen prodigies to engage in investigation and adjudication of common law cases. Needless to say that by any stretch of imagination, the Roman law enforcement system proved to be effective in maintaining law and order at least prior to the decline of the Roman Empire.

By all intends and purposes, every attempt to trace the origin and the corresponding evolution of modern policing systems cannot be treated in isolation to the so-called “brotherhood” armed community peacekeeping groups that first emerged in Spain between the eleventh and twelfth centuries. The advent of the armed community peacekeeping units was borne out of an explicit weakness in the capacity of the monarchy to provide the relevant protection against bandits and other criminal elements who persistently threatened the established social order. Beginning in Castile, the armed community policing system, if you like, emerged in response to the mounting criminal activities. In hindsight, it is known that there were no long term goals attached to the establishment of these groups beyond the frustration of the peace loving citizens and their attendant resolve to counter the prevailing social anomaly.

That was never to be the case, since the armed community police evolved to assume various roles hitherto considered inconceivable within the ranks of the volunteers. For instance, beyond crime prevention the armed community police became instruments of vested political influence overtime. It diverted to new areas of serving various political interests, with often times conflicting roles.

By the nineteenth century, the armed community police in Spain, otherwise known as the brotherhoods came under the authority of Isabella and Ferdinand following the internecine wars of control for turf. It was at during this phase of this evolution that practical efforts had been instituted to constitute a centrally controlled brotherhood security system for the kingdom. This centralization eventually pushed the locally crude brotherhoods unto the fringes of subsequent extinction.

With the Spanish Brotherhood locally driven policing system achieving some degree of success, King Louis XIV of France used it as a formidable model to establish what will become the first ever modern form of state policing activities of its kind in the world (Sheptycki, 1995). The French policing system was first established under the sole mandate of providing public and private security for the city of Paris and its immediate environs. It was much later that their activities were extended to all other parts of the country. In the light of the historical recap of the evolution processes that has crafted the state of traditional and contemporary policing practices, this essay has been able to bring together the different accounts that worked sparingly to create what has become a universally synonymous policing culture around the world.

Reference:

Brodeur, Jean-Paul; Eds., Kevin R. E. McCormick and Livy A. Visano (1992). ”High Policing and Low Policing: Remarks about the Policing of Political Activities,” Understanding Policing. Canadian Scholars’ Press. pp. 284–285, 295

Deflem, M. (2004) Policing World Society; Historical Foundations of International Police Cooperation, Oxford: Calrendon

Hunter, Virginia J. (1994). Policing Athens: Social Control in the Attic Lawsuits, 420-320 B.C.. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. p. 3

Neocleous, Mark (2004). Fabricating Social Order: A Critical History of Police Power. Pluto Press. pp. 93–94.

Siegel, Larry J. (2005). Criminolgy. Thomson Wadsworth. pp. 515,516

Sheptycki, J. (1995) ‘Transnational Policing and the Makings of a Postmodern State’, British Journal of Criminology, 1995, Vol. 35 No. 4 Autumn, pp. 613-635

Walker, Samuel (1977). A Critical History of Police Reform: The Emergence of Professionalism. Lexington, MT: Lexington Books. p. 143.