Abstract
Dodsworth argues that risk management has been an aspect of modern policing from its inception, challenging the idea that shifts towards risk-based police practice occurred only in the later twentieth century. He shows that the 1829 creation of the Metropolitan Police was not a vast rupture with existing systems and theories of policing, which were already loosely risk-based—that is, broadly collective and preventive. It is argued that the crime panics of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in no way determined the response that police reformers devised. Rather, the particular form taken by policing organizations as they developed over the period 1750–1850 was closely related to a wider culture of risk management.
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Notes
- 1.
For a guide to this literature, see C. Emsley, The English Police: A Political and Social History (London, 1996) and his ‘Filling in, Adding up, Moving On: Criminal Justice History in Contemporary Britain’, Crime, History and Societies 9 (2005), pp. 117–38.
- 2.
J.M. Beattie, Policing and Punishment in London, 1660–1750: Urban Crime and the Limits of Terror (Oxford, 2001); J.M. Beattie, The First English Detectives: The Bow Street Runners and the Policing of London, 1750–1840 (Oxford, 2012); A.T. Harris, Policing the City: Crime and Legal Authority in London, 1740–1840 (Columbus, OH, 2004); E.A. Reynolds, Before the Bobbies: The Night Watch and Police Reform in Metropolitan London (Stanford, CA, 1998).
- 3.
J. Styles, ‘The Emergence of the Police—Explaining Police Reform in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century England’, British Journal of Criminology 27 (1987), pp. 19–20. Beattie, The First English Detectives is particularly insistent on this.
- 4.
C. Gordon, ‘Governmental Rationality: An Introduction’, in G. Burchell, C. Gordon and P. Miller (eds), The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality (Hemel Hempstead, 1991), pp. 1–51.
- 5.
On the cultural history of insurance, see T. Alborn, Regulated Lives: Life Insurance and British Society, 1800–1914 (Toronto, 2009); G. Clarke, Betting on Lives: The Culture of Life Insurance in England, 1695–1775 (Manchester, 1999); N. Henry and C. Schmitt (eds), Victorian Investments: New Perspectives on Finance and Culture (Bloomington, IN, 2009); L. McFall and F. Dodsworth, ‘Fabricating the Market: The Material Promotion of Life Assurance in the Long Nineteenth Century’, Journal of Historical Sociology 22 (2009), pp. 30–54.
- 6.
F. Dodsworth, ‘The Idea of Police in Eighteenth-Century England: Discipline, Reformation, Superintendence, c. 1780–1800’, Journal of the History of Ideas 69 (2008), pp. 583–604; M. Neocleous, The Fabrication of Social Order: A Critical Theory of Police Power (London, 2000).
- 7.
R.V. Ericson and K.D. Haggerty, Policing the Risk Society (Oxford, 1997).
- 8.
Ibid., p. 14.
- 9.
Ibid., p. 3.
- 10.
Similar transformations are charted in D. Garland, The Culture of Control: Crime and Social Order in Contemporary Society (Oxford, 2001) and N. Rose, ‘Government and Control’, British Journal of Criminology 40 (2000), pp. 321–39.
- 11.
Classic Foucauldian studies are F. Ewald, ‘Insurance and Risk’ and R. Castel, ‘From Dangerousness to Risk’, in Burchell, Gordon and Miller (eds), The Foucault Effect, pp. 197–210, 281–98; P. O’Malley, ‘Risk, Power and Crime Prevention’, Economy and Society 21 (1992), pp. 252–75 and his ‘Risk and Responsibility’, in A. Barry, T. Osborne and N. Rose (eds), Foucault and Political Reason: Liberalism, Neo-Liberalism and Rationalities of Government (London, 1996), pp. 189–207.
- 12.
P. O’Malley and S. Hutchinson, ‘Reinventing Prevention: Why Did “Crime Prevention” Develop so Late?’, British Journal of Criminology 47 (2007), pp. 373–89. On modern policing as ‘crime fighting’, comparable to the concept of firefighting, see P. O’Malley, Crime and Risk (London, 2010), p. 38.
- 13.
P. O’Malley, Risk, Uncertainty and Government (London, 2004), pp. 5, 13–16.
- 14.
Rose, ‘Government and Control’.
- 15.
Castel is a point of reference for a number of criminologists and sociologists writing on these subjects, but see especially Ericson and Haggerty, Policing the Risk Society, pp. 38, 40, 74 and 104–5; O’Malley and Hutchinson, ‘Reinventing Prevention’; and Rose, ‘Government and Control’.
- 16.
Castel, ‘From Dangerousness to Risk’.
- 17.
Ibid., p. 293.
- 18.
Recent work in this area includes D. Philips, ‘Three “Moral Entrepreneurs” and the Creation of a “Criminal Class” in England, c. 1790s–1840s’, Crime, History & Societies 7 (2003), pp. 1–24; A.L. Beier, ‘Identity, Language and Resistance in the Making of the Victorian “Criminal Class”: Mayhew’s Convict Revisited’, Journal of British Studies 54 (2005), pp. 499–515; and S. Jankiewicz, ‘A Dangerous Class: The Street Sellers of Nineteenth-Century London’, Journal of Social History 46 (2012), pp. 391–415.
- 19.
D. Lemmings, ‘Introduction: Law and Order, Moral Panics and Early Modern England’, in D. Lemmings and C. Walker (eds), Moral Panics, the Media and the Law in Early Modern England (Basingstoke, 2009), p. 2.
- 20.
See L.B. Faller, Turned to Account: The Forms and Functions of Criminal Biography in Late Seventeenth- and Early Eighteenth-Century England (Cambridge, 1987); A. McKenzie, Tyburn’s Martyrs: Execution in England, 1675–1775 (London, 2007).
- 21.
M. Gaskill, ‘The Displacement of Providence: Policing and Prosecution in Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century England’, Continuity and Change 11 (1996), pp. 341–74. See also Clarke, Betting on Lives, p. 3, where a similar decline of faith in providence is noted regarding the insurance industry.
- 22.
P. King, ‘Newspaper Reporting and Attitudes to Crime and Justice in Late Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth-Century London’, Continuity and Change 22 (2007), pp. 73–112 and his ‘Making Crime News: Newspapers, Violent Crime and the Reporting of Old Bailey Trials in the Late Eighteenth Century’, Crime, Histoire & Sociétés/Crime, History & Societies 13 (2009), pp. 91–116; E. Snell, ‘Discourses of Criminality in the Eighteenth-Century Press’, Continuity and Change 22 (2007), pp. 13–47.
- 23.
D. Lemmings, ‘Conclusion: Moral Panics, Law and the Transformation of the Public Sphere in Early Modern England’, in Lemmings and Walker (eds), Moral Panics, p. 255.
- 24.
F. Dodsworth, ‘Habit, the Criminal Body and the Body Politic in England, ‘c. 1700–1800’, Body and Society 19 (2013), pp. 83–106.
- 25.
A. Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity (Cambridge, 1990).
- 26.
See F. Dodsworth, ‘Police and the Prevention of Crime: Commerce, Temptation and the Corruption of the Body Politic, from Fielding to Colquhoun’, British Journal of Criminology 47 (2007), pp. 439–54.
- 27.
See, for example, C. Emsley, Crime and Society in England, 1750–1900, 2nd edn (London, 1996), pp. 56–120; and M.J. Wiener, Reconstructing the Criminal: Culture, Law and Policy in Nineteenth-Century England (Cambridge, 1990). See also the documents in P. Lawrence (ed.), Policing the Poor: The Making of the Modern Police, 1780–1914, Volume 3 (London, 2014).
- 28.
O’Malley and Hutchinson, ‘Reinventing Prevention’, pp. 373–4. See also O’Malley, Crime and Risk, pp. 2–3.
- 29.
Castel, ‘From Dangerousness to Risk’, p. 288.
- 30.
Ewald, ‘Insurance and Risk,’ in Burchell, Gordon and Miller (eds), The Foucault Effect, pp. 197–210, particularly p. 207.
- 31.
Clarke, Betting on Lives, p. 1.
- 32.
Ibid., p. 6.
- 33.
Ibid., pp. 6–7.
- 34.
O’Malley, Risk, Uncertainty and Government, pp. 16, 21, 23.
- 35.
Malley and Hutchinson, ‘Reinventing Prevention’, pp. 376–80. It is notable that although inspection is noted in the 1870s, their references to actuarial practices cite only early twentieth-century sources (pp. 377–8).
- 36.
On the recent history of crime prevention, see A. Crawford, Crime Prevention and Community Safety: Politics, Policies and Practices (London, 1998); D. Gilling, Crime Prevention: Theory, Policy and Practice (London, 1997); G. Hughes, Understanding Crime Prevention: Social Control, Risk and Late Modernity (Buckingham, 1998).
- 37.
On police detection and masculine notions of protection, see F. Dodsworth, ‘Men on a Mission: Masculinity, Violence and the Self-Presentation of Policemen in England, c. 1870–1914’, in D.G. Barrie and S. Broomhall (eds), A History of Police and Masculinities, 1700–2010 (Basingstoke, 2012), pp. 123–40.
- 38.
We might add that long before the late nineteenth century, fire prevention itself was a concern of municipal corporations and other agencies concerned with building regulations and design.
- 39.
On the broader ‘social’ work of the ‘police’, see Dodsworth, ‘The Idea of Police’; and Neocleous, The Fabrication of Social Order.
- 40.
The connections are clear in Lawrence (ed.), Policing the Poor, but see also A. Hunt, Governing Morals: A Social History of Moral Regulation (Cambridge, 2000); G. Stedman Jones, Outcast London: A Study in the Relationship between Classes in Victorian Society (Oxford, 1971).
- 41.
O’Malley, Crime and Risk, pp. 25–6.
- 42.
F. Dodsworth, ‘“Civic” Police and the Condition of Liberty: The Rationality of Governance in Eighteenth-Century England’, Social History 29 (2004), pp. 199–216 and his ‘Masculinity as Governance: Police, Public Service and the Embodiment of Authority, c. 1700–1850’, in M.L. McCormack (ed.), Public Men: Masculinity and Politics in Modern Britain (Basingstoke, 2007), pp. 33–53.
- 43.
N. Landau, The Justices of the Peace, 1679–1760 (Berkeley, CA, 1984).
- 44.
See Beattie, Policing and Punishment in London, pp. 226–58; R. Paley, ‘Thief-Takers in London in the Age of the McDaniel Gang’, in D. Hay and F. Snyder (eds), Policing and Prosecution in Britain, 1750–1850 (Oxford, 1989), pp. 301–40; T. Wales, ‘Thief-Takers and their Clients’, in P. Griffiths and M.S.R. Jenner (eds), Londonopolis: Essays in the Cultural and Social History of Early Modern London (Manchester, 2000), pp. 67–85.
- 45.
N. Landau, ‘The Trading Justice’s Trade’, in N. Landau (ed.), Law, Crime and English Society, 1660–1830 (Cambridge, 2002), pp. 46–70.
- 46.
D. Hay and F. Snyder, ‘Using the Criminal Law 1750–1850: Policing, Private Prosecution and the State’, in Hay and Snyder (eds), Policing and Prosecution, pp. 26–7.
- 47.
See Beattie, Policing and Punishment and The First English Detectives.
- 48.
D. Philips, ‘Good Men to Associate and Bad Men to Conspire: Associations for the Prosecution of Felons in England, 1760–1860’, in Hay and Snyder (eds), Policing and Prosecution, p. 125.
- 49.
See Beattie, Policing and Punishment, pp. 169–225.
- 50.
P. Rawlings, Policing: A Short History (Cullompton, 2002), pp. 66, 68, 69, 71.
- 51.
Ibid., pp. 74–5.
- 52.
Manchester Central Reference Library, Local Studies Unit, ‘Reports of the Police Establishments in Various Towns’ [1828–9], M9/30/9/1, p. 5.
- 53.
See P. King, ‘Prosecution Associations and their Impact in Eighteenth-Century Essex’, in Hay and Snyder (eds), Policing and Prosecution, pp. 171–210; A. Schubert, ‘Private Initiative in Law Enforcement: Associations for the Prosecution of Felons, 1744–1856’, in V. Bailey (ed.), Policing and Prosecution in Nineteenth-Century Britain (London, 1981), pp. 25–41.
- 54.
Potton Association, for the Protection of Property, and Punishment of Offenders, within the Parish of Potton, and the adjacent Towns, Parishes, and Places, not exceeding the Distance of Six Miles from Potton: Instituted the 23rd Day of February, and by Adjournment to the 3d [sic] March, 1790.
- 55.
Philips, ‘Good Men to Associate and Bad Men to Conspire’, p. 121. On moral reform, see Hunt, Governing Morals, pp. 28–76.
- 56.
On the history of burglary insurance, see H.A.L. Cockerell and E. Green, The British Insurance Business, 1547–1970: An Introduction and Guide to Historical Records in the United Kingdom (London, 1976), pp. 47–8, 55–6; E. Moss, ‘Burglary Insurance and the Culture of Fear in Britain, c. 1889–1939’, Historical Journal 54 (2011), pp. 1039–64.
- 57.
Philips, ‘Good Men to Associate and Bad Men to Conspire’, pp. 120–1.
- 58.
King, ‘Prosecution Associations and their Impact in Eighteenth-Century Essex’, pp. 188–90.
- 59.
The link between prosecution associations and insurance is made in Hay and Snyder, ‘Using the Criminal Law, 1750–1850’, pp. 26–7; and Philips, ‘Good Men to Associate and Bad Men to Conspire’, pp. 121, 125–6, 139.
- 60.
Articles of the Association, for the Prosecution of Horse-Stealers and other Felons, within the Parishes of Stoke-Ferry, and Towns adjacent, in the County of Norfolk (Lynn, 1808), pp. 3–4. The same argument is made in Rules, Orders, and Regulations of Crowle Association for the Prosecution of Felons (Howden, 1814), p. 3.
- 61.
Copy of a Deed of Association for the Prosecution of Felons (Birmingham, 1773).
- 62.
Quoted in Philips, ‘Good Men to Associate and Bad Men to Conspire’, p. 126.
- 63.
On the ‘governmentalization of the state’, see M. Foucault, ‘Governmentality’, in Burchell, Gordon and Miller (eds), The Foucault Effect, pp. 87–104.
- 64.
For the transformation of the watch in the eighteenth century, see E.A. Reynolds, Before the Bobbies: The Night Watch and Police Reform in Metropolitan London (Stanford, CA, 1998).
- 65.
Beattie, Policing and Punishment; Reynolds, Before the Bobbies; and R. Paley, ‘“An Imperfect, Inadequate and Wretched System?” Policing London before Peel’, Criminal Justice History 10 (1989), pp. 95–130.
- 66.
Manchester was one such commission that was termed a ‘police commission’. For a study of this body, see F. Dodsworth, ‘Mobility and Civility: Police and the Formation of the Modern City’, in G. Bridge and S. Watson (eds), The New Blackwell Companion to the City (Oxford, 2011), pp. 235–44.
- 67.
The classic study of these organizations in England remains S. Webb and B. Webb, A History of English Local Government, Volume 4: Special Bodies for Special Purposes (London, 1922). For Scotland, see D. Barrie, Police in the Age of Improvement: Police Development and the Civic Tradition in Scotland, 1775–1865 (Cullompton, 2008).
- 68.
D. Eastwood, Government and Community in the English Provinces, 1700–1870 (Basingstoke, 1997), p. 66.
- 69.
Beattie, Policing and Punishment, p. 84.
- 70.
D. Philips, ‘“A New Engine of Power and Authority”: The Institutionalization of Law-Enforcement in England, 1780–1830’, in V.A.C. Gatrell, B. Lenman and G. Parker (eds), Crime and the Law: The Social History of Crime in Western Europe since 1500 (London, 1980), pp. 155–89.
- 71.
See Dodsworth, ‘The Idea of Police’; and F. Dodsworth (ed.), The ‘Idea’ of Policing: The Making of the Modern Police, Volume I (London, 2014), which excerpts and introduces many of the contributions to these debates.
- 72.
G. Barrett, An Essay Towards Establishing a System of Police, on Constitutional Principles (London, 1786); R. Brown, ‘Barrett, George (1752–1821)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, available at: www.oxforddnb.com.oxfordbrookes.idm.oclc.org/view/article/1523 (date accessed 11 November 2015). See also Dodsworth (ed.), The ‘Idea’ of Policing, pp. 149–58.
- 73.
Barrett, An Essay, pp. 60–1.
- 74.
See Beattie, The First English Detectives; and Reynolds, Before the Bobbies.
- 75.
On Colquhoun, see especially Dodsworth, ‘Police and the Prevention of Crime’.
- 76.
H.A. Merewether, A New System of Police, with Reference to the Evidence Given to the Police Committee of the House of Commons (London, 1816), p. 13, emphasis in original.
- 77.
Ibid., pp. 13–15, 18–19, emphasis in original.
- 78.
Ibid., pp. 9, 27.
- 79.
Ibid., pp. 35–8.
- 80.
Ibid., pp. 53–5.
- 81.
Ibid., pp. 6–7, 57, emphasis in original.
- 82.
Uniquely in England and Wales, the Home Office directly controlled the Metropolitan Police until the creation of the Metropolitan Police Authority (2000) under the Greater London Assembly.
- 83.
F. Dodsworth, ‘The Institution of Police in Britain, c. 1750–1856: A Study in Historical Governmentality’ (PhD thesis, University of Manchester, 2002).
- 84.
S. Petrow, Policing Morals: The Metropolitan Police and the Home Office, 1870–1914 (Oxford, 1994).
- 85.
See the classic study by J.R. Walkowitz, Prostitution and Victorian Society: Women, Class and the State (Cambridge, 1982). See also Petrow, Policing Morals.
- 86.
Petrow, Policing Morals.
- 87.
Castel, ‘From Dangerousness to Risk’, p. 288.
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Dodsworth, F. (2016). Risk, Prevention and Policing, c. 1750–1850. In: Crook, T., Esbester, M. (eds) Governing Risks in Modern Britain. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-46745-4_2
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