In my last post, I mentioned about how it feels like a life-time's work to try to get to grips with policing in other jurisdictions. Well, over the last few days I have been taking a few more mini steps towards this whole life-time of work, or at least I hope so. I have been rather avidly reading about the history of policing in France, England, Ireland, America and Australia. Whilst there is much that they share, there are many differences (sometimes subtle and sometimes not) which are difficult to explain.
For instance, why is that the police in the U.S. routinely carry firearms, whilst the police in England do not? [By the way, the police officers that I researched in America found this fact astounding]. On the one hand, one might point to the American constitution and argue that the right to bear arms has long been a fundamental part of American society. However, I was rather persuaded by Jean-Paul Brodeur's rather more nuanced answer to this question in his brilliant new book 'The policing web'. He argues that, in England, the ruling class had to be cautious in their recourse to coercion, as the 'ruled' population in the nineteenth century was relatively large compared to that of the rulers. This necessitated a kind of "quiet coercion" in which the police sought to rule by consent and without carrying firearms. By contrast, in America, those regarded as being in need of the most social control were the latest wave of immigrants and these groups were far from being in a majority in American society. Hence, Brodeur says, "there was no need to placate them, and force was used without much restraint; the police could be confidently violent, knowing that they always had the majority on their side" (2010: 72).
I am hoping that what is going to be great about my new module on police and policing in a global context is that it forces you to look outside the practicalities of policing and consider the wider social and historical context in which they take place. As this small example shows, police practices of the present are well and truly embedded in societies of the past.
About Me
- Dr Layla Skinns
- Layla Skinns is a Senior Lecturer in criminology in the Centre for Criminological Research at the School of Law, University of Sheffield. Before joining the Centre for Criminological Research, Layla worked at the University of Cambridge, where she was the Adrian Socio-Legal Research Fellow at Darwin College and a Teaching Associate on the MSt. in Applied Criminology for senior police, prison and probation staff. Whilst working as a Research Fellow at Darwin College, she co-organised the prestigious Darwin College Lecture Series on the theme of risk. Her qualifications are: MA (Hons) Sociology and Psychology, University of Edinburgh, 2000; MPhil Criminological Research, University of Cambridge, 2001 and PhD Criminology, University of Cambridge, 2005
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