History and Structure of Policing

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Many people know of the police officers of today’s world and that it is their job to enforce the laws set by their government, but not many people know the history of your typical everyday United States police officer or how they came about. The idea for neither your everyday police officer nor his or her department they work for or how a police department operates, originated in the United States. Over the years though America has made changes and adapted its system over the years to make it more suitable for its countries beliefs and practices. Police forces or Law enforcers have been used for centuries all around the world but America took particular interest in the English’s policing system. America’s policing ideas and process began based off the British model. Back in the early 1200’s when Britain first started its law enforcement program it was very unorganized and wasn’t by any means serving “justice” to its people. Trials to determine if someone was innocent or guilty were very rare, and when they did occur innocence and guilt wasn’t proven but assumed that the offender to just be guilty. This would in most cases cause the “offender” to become the victim by having public executions which normally involved torture and other inhumane practices to the victim. In the late 1200’s however British law practices started to change and become more organize and fair. A set of four rules that would become to be known as the Statue of Winchester that set the guide lines that would create a watch and ward system in English cities and towns that would codify earlier police systems and practices. Meanwhile, in the early eighteenth century in London, Henry Fielding dubbed a force of dedicated English police officers as the Bow Street Runn... ... middle of paper ... ...long way since adopting the English law enforcement practices as its own foundation all those years ago but that doesn’t mean the U.S. doesn’t have a long way to go to perfecting its own system of law enforcement. Works Cited • Schmalleger, F. (2013). Policing: History and Structure. Criminal Justice Today An Introduction Text For the 21st Century (12th ed., ). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education, Inc. • Bob Johnson's Toughbook Stuff. (n.d.). : How Police Technology Has Changed.... Retrieved , from http://www.panasoniclaptops.com/2012/01/how-police-technology-has-changed.html • UN Declaration of Human Rights, Innocent Until Proven Guilty, Videos : United for Human Rights (UN Declaration of Human Rights, Innocent Until Proven Guilty, Videos : United for Human Rights) http://www.humanrights.com/what-are-human-rights/videos/innocent-till-proven-guilty.html

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