Police Methods

Abstract

It is unrealistic to ignore the special feeling of dread that the modern term. ‘police state’ now evokes. This dread seems to arise from unanalysed fears that police powers will be systematically abused, and police services and their agents will behave in an especially intimidating manner. These preoccupations were seldom noticed in the traditional police state where the principal fears expressed were of clandestine and persistent spying, which was much resented, and where there was a belief that the police used their offices for interfering in politics. The police were regarded as being the willing tools of the executive, but it was against the executives and the authoritarian systems of government rather than against the police themselves that the hostility was chiefly aimed.