America 's police system is based on Robert Peel’s London police model and yet America accomplished a unique police model of their own. The United States’ police history went through a few police eras before they reached the present day community era. Each policing era bore mistakes and advancements, but they all informed the current policing era. Today, one can look back and see the different and similar aspects of each era and compare it to modern policing.
Many history texts tend to skip over one of the most crucial elements of early police history, which is slave patrol. Slave patrols were the earlier forms of law enforcement in the United States (Williams, 2015). Slave patrols were a big part of southern life where the basis of the economy …show more content…
Should someone act unfavorably, as seen by the regulars of that area, the regulars would turn to the local patrol officer for help and/or deride the violator. The officer would then take extra steps outside of his jurisdiction to enforce certain behaviors that the people in the area found appropriate and the action would leave the people reassured. Should the officer have ignored the situation, there would have been a ripple effect. The broken windows theory states that if a window were broken and left unrepaired, many of the surrounding windows would soon be broken as well. An unrepaired window is a sign to the rest of the community that “[...] no one cares and so more breaking more windows would costs nothing” (Wilson and Kelling, 2010, p. 408). It was the ignorance of disruptive behavior, such as public drunkenness, during the reform era that were the “broken windows” left unrepaired (Walker, 2010, p. 421). Wilson and Kelling argue that it was this broken windows that lead citizens to feel unsafe and for crime to rise.
Wilson and Kelling believe that disorder and crime are linked and so if the officer had ignored his duty or people stopped ridiculing others for bad behavior, people would assume no one cared and they would eventually go on to commit crimes. Ignorance of a crime could change a well maintained and stable neighborhood into an inhospitable place. Wilson and Kelling believed footpatrol helped maintain not only formal forms of social control, but also the informal types in neighborhoods that kept the area stable with low crime rates. However, some have come to disagree with the broken windows
Many history texts tend to skip over one of the most crucial elements of early police history, which is slave patrol. Slave patrols were the earlier forms of law enforcement in the United States (Williams, 2015). Slave patrols were a big part of southern life where the basis of the economy …show more content…
Should someone act unfavorably, as seen by the regulars of that area, the regulars would turn to the local patrol officer for help and/or deride the violator. The officer would then take extra steps outside of his jurisdiction to enforce certain behaviors that the people in the area found appropriate and the action would leave the people reassured. Should the officer have ignored the situation, there would have been a ripple effect. The broken windows theory states that if a window were broken and left unrepaired, many of the surrounding windows would soon be broken as well. An unrepaired window is a sign to the rest of the community that “[...] no one cares and so more breaking more windows would costs nothing” (Wilson and Kelling, 2010, p. 408). It was the ignorance of disruptive behavior, such as public drunkenness, during the reform era that were the “broken windows” left unrepaired (Walker, 2010, p. 421). Wilson and Kelling argue that it was this broken windows that lead citizens to feel unsafe and for crime to rise.
Wilson and Kelling believe that disorder and crime are linked and so if the officer had ignored his duty or people stopped ridiculing others for bad behavior, people would assume no one cared and they would eventually go on to commit crimes. Ignorance of a crime could change a well maintained and stable neighborhood into an inhospitable place. Wilson and Kelling believed footpatrol helped maintain not only formal forms of social control, but also the informal types in neighborhoods that kept the area stable with low crime rates. However, some have come to disagree with the broken windows