The History and Sociological Functions of Policing in the US
The Evolving Role of Policing: From Order Maintenance to Economic Enforcement
Initial Discussion: Implications of Observation and Police as an Influencing Force
When individuals are observed by others, their reactions and decision-making can change significantly, highlighting external influences on behavior.
Police act as an operating force, intrinsically influencing how decisions are made within a community.
The values of a municipal police department affect how laws are carried out and to what extent they are enforced, as everyone is subject to federal law, but local policing dictates application.
Public perception of police (e.g., concerns about discrimination against minorities, heightened scrutiny post-George Floyd) influences how policing is viewed and scrutinized.
Historical Roots of Policing in the United States
Global Context: US forms of policing are highly influential and dispatched across the world, making a US-focused historical conversation particularly relevant.
Early Northern Policing: Night Watch Systems (Early s - s)
Emerged by mimicking practices in England.
Initially consisted of volunteers watching over communities at night:
Boston: Created night watch in
New York: Established in
Philadelphia: Formed in
Motivations for volunteering varied, with many reportedly joining to evade military service.
These volunteers were often ineffective, frequently sleeping on the job.
Eventually, municipalities began to codify these roles, establishing dedicated departments for night watching.
The first centralized municipal police departments began to emerge in the , marking a significant shift from informal watch systems to more structured law enforcement.
Early Southern Policing: Slave Patrols (Prior to )
Developed earlier and predominantly in Southern states, rooted in chattel slavery (s to mid-s).
The first slave patrol in the Carolina colonies was established in .
Functions:
To chase down, apprehend, and forcibly return runaway enslaved people, often for a fee.
To serve as a form of organized terror, aiming to deter potential slave revolts, which were occurring in various forms across the country.
To maintain strict discipline among enslaved people (viewed as a labor force), collaborating directly with slave owners.
These were vigilante-style organizations that eventually became codified into established policing organizations and evolved into municipal police departments, particularly in the South.
Policing's True Origin: Disorder, Not Necessarily Crime
Absence of Crime Wave: The emergence of municipal police departments was not necessarily driven by an increased wave of crime. The same amount of crime, often related to public drinking, was occurring.
Focus on Disorder: The primary impetus for US policing was maintaining order and addressing disorderly conduct, which sometimes overlapped with crime but was not its sole focus.
Example: The night watch was often involved in policing individuals who were presumably drinking in public, a matter of social order rather than serious crime.
Early Enforcement: Punishments for crimes often came from the government directly, rather than from dedicated municipal policing departments in the earliest forms.
Post-Civil War Evolution: Protecting Economic Interests and Strike Breaking
Shift in Focus: After the Civil War, and notably in the late century, the attention of municipal police departments largely shifted from dealing with general crime to working on behalf of manufacturers, corporations, and employers seeking to maximize profit.
Rise of Unions and Worker Unrest: Workers began organizing into unions (especially in New York and other industrial centers) to collectively demand better conditions and wages from employers, leading to widespread unrest.
Employer Costs and Offloading Security:
Conceding to worker demands was costly for employers.
Hiring private security to manage workers was also expensive.
Employers found it more cost-effective to offload the responsibility of breaking strikes, preventing riots, and managing disorder to the state (government), effectively using public employees for private economic interests.
Rationale for Police Involvement in Strike Breaking:
Legally Ordained Force: Police intervention provided a legally sanctioned use of force against striking workers.
Cost-Effective: It was more cost-effective for manufacturers to have public police forces suppress labor unrest than to hire expensive private security.
Politically Useful: This intervention was politically convenient for authorities and industrialists who sought to maintain economic stability and suppress labor movements.
Conflation of Worker Rights with "Crime": A critical outcome was the conflation of workers' rights to organize and protest with criminal activity, essentially criminalizing labor movements.
Government Empowerment: Politicians saw an opportunity to create their own enforcement mechanisms, giving legal authority and power to these newly formalized municipal departments, which previously operated in a more informal capacity.
Conclusion on Policing Roots: The fundamental roots of American policing are intrinsically tied not to the problem of crime itself, but to the demands of the nation's political economy, particularly concerning class and labor struggles.
Policing Today: Activities, Statistics, and Systemic Issues
Primary Activities of Police Officers:
Police often spend the majority of their time responding to noise complaints, issuing parking and traffic citations, and dealing with other non-criminal issues.
New York Times Review of Major City Police Departments (Key Statistics):
Serious Violent Crimes: Constituted only about of all calls for service.
Arrests for Violent Offenses: Out of million arrests made by police yearly, only were for violent offenses.
Crime Reporting Rates: Only around of all crime victims report their experiences to the police.
Clearance Rates for Reported Crimes: Only about of reported crimes are cleared by arrests.
Murder Case Clearance Rates: Approaching of murder cases are cleared. This rate drops significantly to when the homicide involves a gun.
Sexual Violence Reporting Rates: Less than of sexual violence cases are reported to the police.
Reasons for Underreporting (Sexual Violence): of victims cite fear that the police could not, or would not, provide help in such cases.
Police Misconduct and Intimate Partner Violence:
Police officers themselves are found to commit sexual assault and domestic violence at alarmingly high rates.
Around of officers have intimate partner violence in their households, a significantly higher rate compared to roughly of the general public.
Legal Scholarship on Policing:
Narrow Focus: Current legal scholarship on policing is often too narrow in its scope.
Emphasis on Crime Control: It primarily focuses on crime control or criminality, and examines techniques designed for crime suppression.
Neglected Areas: This narrow focus notably overlooks the substantial non-criminal functions of policing, which, as evidenced by current statistics, constitute a large portion of police activity.
Police Reform and Systemic Inequality:
Interconnectedness: Police reform cannot be effectively separated from other central strategies and mechanisms of American (racial) inequality.
Holistic Approach: True reform requires addressing the deeper systemic issues of racial inequality that are intertwined with the history and ongoing practices of policing in the United States.