Reforming the Nineteenth Century Police System

Reforming the Nineteenth Century Police System

American cities of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries had problems with crime, vice, and disorder. Some urbanites complained about the extent of prostitution, brawling, and robbery. Yet few cities felt impelled to make subsequent changes in the traditional pattern of night watch and unsalaried police officers before the 1830s. There are many reasons for problems getting worse in American cities. One reason for this is that serious crimes, by the standard of subsequent decades at any rate, were infrequent. Another reason was that there was a good deal of corruption in the old system of policing. The geographical growth of the cities and their population increased, and crime was happening more frequently. As a result, major cities like New York demanded reform of the police system. By the 1830s, larger northern cities found their problems of crime and disorder overpowering the traditional instruments for dealing with them. The old system was not able to maintain order or prevent crimes. This coincided with a tremendous growth of urban population. America was shifting from a farming civilization to a big business society, and there was mass immigration into the United States, with many men and women settling in cities. For example, cities such as New York, Boston, and Philadelphia underwent rapid social and economic change in this time period. Because of the pace of this change, the policing system could not maintain order, and demands for reform increased. Immigration jumped substantially after 1830. The total number of arrivals at the port of New York was more than three times greater in the 1830s than it had been the previous decade, and there was a great movement on Manhattan Island as well as many other major cities. From time to time, New York State officials extended the city’s lamp and watch district, the area in which the municipal corporation was to provide street lighting and watch protection and to collect taxes to pay for these services.[1] Boston had twice as many people in 1840 as twenty years before, causing problems in urban cities.