To Protect And Serve? A History Of The Police Force And Its Place In Society

Issues of law and order have a high profile today across the media and on political agendas. Central to the political debates and the factual and fictional narratives are the police and policing. In Britain in particular there is an inclination to look back to a golden age when there was an avuncular, uniformed bobby patrolling every street ensuring that crime was kept to a minimum, and that offenders were speedily brought to justice.

Yet while, over the last quarter century, there has been considerable historical research into crime, police and policing, historians have been perhaps a little reticent about engaging with some of the claims about the golden age and in challenging some of the, to them rather familiar, 'new' solutions to crime and disorder.

This book aims to provide a thorough historical understanding of how police forces the world over emerged, why they evolved into the entities they are today, and what society might expect from the police in the years to come.