Eras of Policing According to Most Experts

Eras of Policing

According to most experts there are three distinct eras of policing, the political (1840-1930), reform (1930-1970) and community problem-solving era (1970-current). During the political era policing was focused on making politicians happy, was loosely based and had limited civic ties or regulatory bodies. The reform era of policing began to normalize policing in the civic sense, with stronger connections between bureaucratic agencies and the police, moving away from political motive and toward the needs of the community. It was during the reform era of policing that police agencies and departments began to be governed by a hierarchy, in a more militaristic style, began to wear uniforms reflective of a more professional level of policing and began to answer to a less political body, i.e. The public. After the 1970s a demand began to make police more accountable to the public and the community-problem solving era began. This era has been marked with a greater emphasis on community policing, greater professionalism, and police bureaus and agencies more reflective of the communities which they serve. All three eras a re clearly not reflective of a clean line, meaning that all areas of the nation and agencies conformed to the changes at any given time but they are roughly reflective of the trends throughout the whole of criminal justice that is intended to make more easy a historical perspective of policing in America. (Hartman, 1988, p. 1) This work will briefly compare and contrast the three eras of policing.

During the political policing era the actions of police were unpredictable and often associated with the needs and desires of the various important political figures in the era. Some communities had police that extended their role to carting up vagrants and getting them to the polls to vote for the particular candidate, using force and coercion as well as payment. Yet, their role was still reflective of keeping things in order, even if that order was reflective more of the desires of the current political leaders. Payment for service was often supplemented by the political leaders and actions were often not professional or community minded. Corruption was common, and of course varied across localities but basically is was a relatively lawless era where it was more important to be in favor of the powerful and less important to protect the innocent. In many cases the era was marked by uncommon brutality, corruption, and lawlessness on the part of police, who had no bureaucratic or professional watchdogs to contain their actions once ordered by those in political power (Hartman, 1988, p. 5). The response to this sense of the police as above the laws they enforced was the reform era of policing.

During the reform era the police began to be more associated with the civic locations where they worked. Police began during this era to wear uniforms, focus more on community peacekeeping and administer justice within the confines of the laws they enforced. Communities began to develop better ways of compensating police, destabilizing the corruptive forms of compensation that had dominated the political era. Police were restricted from receiving bribes, collecting hush money or protection money and had to work more closely with supervision that was less tied to politics and more focused on community needs. Yet, also during this time the nation faced never before seen levels of crime and the police felt somewhat helpless to do anything about it, as the laws they were enforcing were not strong enough and the level of police support was still limited (Hartman, 1988, p. 5). Additionally because of the serious need to reign in the corruption seen in policing during the previous era most systems were set up on a hierarchical (militaristic) leadership system that kept police in line but did not reflect the value of police discretion or the standards of the changing communities. Again in response in many ways to the strict militaristic style of policing the community-problem solving era of policing was ushered in.