During the last two centuries, the job of policing in Britain has been transformed several times. This book analyses the ways that police institutions have controlled the individual constable on the 'front line'. The eighteenth-century constable was an independent artisan: his successor in the Metropolitan Police and other 'new' forces was ferociously disciplined and closely monitored. Police have been controlled by a variety of different practices, ranging from direct day-to-day input from 'the community', through bureaucratic systems built around exacting codes of rules, to the real-time control of officers via radio, and latterly the use of centralised computer systems to deliver key information. Police forces became pioneers in the adoption of many technologies – including telegraphs, telephones, office equipment, radio and computers – and this book explains why and how this happened, considering the role of national security in the adoption of many of these innovations. It will be of use to a range of disciplines, including history, criminology, and science and technology studies.

Over six volumes this edited collection of pamphlets, government publications, printed ephemera and manuscript sources looks at the development of the first modern police force. It will be of interest to social and political historians, criminologists and those interested in the development of the detective novel in nineteenth-century literature. This is Part I, Volume 3.

The history of modern crime control is usually presented as a narrative of how the state wrested control over the governance of crime from the civilian public. Most accounts trace the decline of a participatory, discretionary culture of crime control in the early modern era, and its replacement by a centralized, bureaucratic system of responding to offending. The formation of the 'new' professional police forces in the nineteenth century is central to this narrative: henceforth, it is claimed, the priorities of criminal justice were to be set by the state, as ordinary people lost what authority they had once exercised over dealing with offenders. This book challenges this established view, and presents a fundamental reinterpretation of changes to crime control in the age of the new police. It breaks new ground by providing a highly detailed, empirical analysis of everyday crime control in Victorian provincial cities - revealing the tremendous activity which ordinary people displayed in responding to crime - alongside a rich survey of police organization and policing in practice. With unique conceptual clarity, it seeks to reorient modern criminal justice history away from its established preoccupation with state systems of policing and punishment, and move towards a more nuanced analysis of the governance of crime. More widely, the book provides a unique and valuable vantage point from which to rethink the role of civil society and the state in modern governance, the nature of agency and authority in Victorian England, and the historical antecedents of pluralized modes of crime control which characterize contemporary society.

This introductory book offers a coherent history of twentieth century crime and the law in Britain, with chapters on topics ranging from homicide to racial hate crime, from incest to anarchism, from gangs to the death penalty. Pulling together a wide range of literature, David Nash and Anne-Marie Kilday reveal the evolution of attitudes towards criminality and the law over the course of the twentieth century. Highlighting important periods of change and development that have shaped the overall history of crime in Britain, the authors provide in-depth analysis and explanation of each theme. This is an ideal companion for undergraduate students taking courses on Crime in Britain, as well as a fascinating resource for scholars.

For more than 200 years, everyday life in Britain has been beset by a variety of dangers, from the mundane to the life-threatening. Governing Risks in Modern Britain focuses on the steps taken to manage these dangers and to prevent accidents since approximately 1800. It brings together cutting-edge research to help us understand the multiple and contested ways in which dangers have been governed. It demonstrates that the category of ‘risk’, broadly defined, provides a new means of historicising some key developments in British society. Chapters explore road safety and policing, environmental and technological dangers, and occupational health and safety. The book thus brings together practices and ideas previously treated in isolation, situating them in a common context of risk-related debates, dilemmas and difficulties. Doing so, it argues, advances our understanding of how modern British society has been governed and helps to set our risk-obsessed present in some much needed historical perspective.

Policing Suspicion is an innovative examination of policing practices and the impact of these on patterns of arrest and prosecution in London, 1780-1850. The work establishes and defines the idea of 'proactive policing' in historical context: where police officers exercised discretion to arrest defendants on suspicion that they had recently committed, or were about to commit, an offence. Through detailed examination of primary sources, including the Old Bailey Proceedings, newspaper reports, instructions for police officers, archival records of policing practices and Select Committee reports, the book examines the reasons given for arrests, and the characteristics of those arrested. Suggesting that individual police officers made active choices using their discretion, the book highlights how policing practices affected the received record of criminal activity. It also explores continuities and changes in policing practices before and after the establishment of the Metropolitan Police force in 1829, examining the expectations placed on the various officials responsible for law enforcement. The book contends that policing practices, and proactive officers themselves, contributed to the prevalence of criminal stereotypes. Beyond the historical, the book is situated within criminological frameworks around policing and preventive justice, noting parallels between historical policing based on suspicion and contemporary police powers such as stop and search. Speaking to issues of wider significance for criminologists by examining interactions between the police and suspects, and reflecting on police decision making processes, the book offers an original approach to those researching both the history of crime and policing, and criminology and criminal justice more broadly.

Over six volumes this edited collection of pamphlets, government publications, printed ephemera and manuscript sources looks at the development of the first modern police force. It will be of interest to social and political historians, criminologists and those interested in the development of the detective novel in nineteenth-century literature.