Why was the 1920s to the 1960s probably the most significant period in the development of policing in the United States?

After passage of the County and Borough Police Act in 1856, police departments spread throughout England. Provincial police were funded by both local and central governments. After the Home Office certified the quality of a provincial police department, the central government paid half the cost of local policing, and local taxes paid the rest. The dominant methods of provincial policing were foot patrols and criminal investigations.

Policing in the United States during the late 19th century was complicated by migration and immigration, which continually reshaped the ethnic and cultural makeup of cities, and by the radical decentralization of police authority within the cities. The major strength of the decentralized approach was that it brought the police and the public into close contact. Police knew the local citizens, and they were often recruited from the very neighbourhoods they policed. Such close contact allowed police to spot troublemakers, identify local problems, and provide various public services.

The decentralization of police jurisdictions to individual cities also created problems. It did not produce effective crime control, well-policed cities, or efficient public services. Although crime did not respect jurisdictional lines, police forces were required to do so; the policing powers of officers were restricted to the jurisdiction they policed and were not transferable to other areas. Thus, no police organization had jurisdiction over the American western frontier, though crime was rife there. A further problem was that there was no national policy of policing in the United States, as there was in England following the adoption of Peel’s Principles.

During the 19th century the authority of municipal police officers in the United States derived from the local political power, but their ability to gain the cooperation of citizens depended most often upon the abilities of individual officers. As a result, American police departments developed a personalized style of policing that allowed officers greater discretion than that used by the London bobby. This form of policing led to the creation of the myth of the “tough street cop” who handled all problems on his beat through the application of physical punishment—an image that still dominates police lore and media portrayals. During this period, however, American policing was characterized by corruption, inefficiency, political interference, and discriminatory law enforcement.

In response to intrajurisdictional crime waves in the second half of the 19th century, states enacted laws giving many business corporations the authority to create their own private police forces or to contract with established police agencies. The Coal and Iron Police of Pennsylvania was a company police force that later became notorious for its antilabour vigilantism. The most famous independent police force was the Pinkerton National Detective Agency. Created in 1850 by Allan Pinkerton, a political fugitive from Scotland whose father was a police sergeant, the Pinkerton agency provided a wide array of private detective services and specialized in protecting trains, apprehending train robbers, and strikebreaking and other activities directed against labour unions.

Attempts in the late 19th century to develop a coherent vision of an intercity police system were largely unsuccessful, and the police theory that did develop was formulated mainly in local political halls. As immigrant groups gradually gained political control of city wards and neighbourhoods, the link between the police and neighbourhood politics became closer. In some instances the relationship was so close that the police actually became adjuncts of local political machines. The linking of police and politics bred political and financial corruption and injustice. Police became involved in partisan political activity to ensure the election of particular candidates; they received “gratuities” for not enforcing unpopular vice laws; and they excluded strangers from social and political life.

The political and organizational problems associated with municipal policing in the United States prevented the development of professional policing according to the English model. By the end of the 19th century, middle- and upper-class citizens in many cities were trying to centralize local political power to end the control of some wards by ethnic minority groups. Reformers attempted to centralize services on a citywide basis, create a civil service that would end political patronage, provide police chiefs with tenure in office, and transfer control of police to cities at large—or, if all else failed, to the state government.

Australia, settled as a penal colony in 1788, initially used the English constabulary and watch-and-ward systems. Problems plagued those systems, however, because both constables and watchmen were often recruited from the ranks of convicts. Modeled after England’s Metropolitan Police Act, the Sydney Police Act of 1833 led to the establishment of urban police forces. Police coverage was extended to rural areas in 1838, when each of the country’s six states created its own police agency.

Although the state police encountered a lack of public acceptance and many of the same problems of police in England and the United States, their task was complicated by additional responsibilities. They were mandated not only to capture criminals but also to inflict corporal punishment on convicted persons. Australian police duties also included the enforcement of health and welfare provisions of the law.