THE ROLE OF PRIVATE INDIVIDUALS
and the beginning of the modern police service
as we know it today.

Neighbourhood Watch is a co-operation between the police service and the community to help keep our community as safe as possible.     Without the assistance of community individuals the police service would have little chance of doing their job.

Whilst Neighbourhood Watch is touted as a relatively new initiative to bring about police – community co-operation.    In reality this partnership started in the late 1600’s when community members were not only requested to assist with law enforcement but had a specific duty to identify the culprits and secure their arrest by contacting a constable or justice of the peace.    Those who witnessed a felony had a legal obligation placed upon them to arrest those responsible for the crime, and to notify a constable or justice of the peace.    It is from here that the saying "hue and cry" came from as residents were required to assist the special constables by joining in the pursuit of any escaping felon as a result of a victims “hue and cry” or calling out that they had been made the victim of a cry.

Although these legal obligations were rarely enforced during this period, Londoners continued to help apprehend suspected criminals.     As the Proceedings frequently illustrate, cries of "stop thief!" or "murder!" from victims often successfully elicited assistance from passersby in preventing crimes or apprehending suspects.    Individual responsibility for law enforcement was eroded over a long period of time, as increasing numbers of men were paid to carry out this task.

For example, victims paid 'thief-takers' to locate and apprehend suspects.     Thus came the expression “taking the law into your own hands”.    The difficulties the authorities had in identifying and apprehending criminals led them, too, to offer rewards to thief-takers and others, and pardons to accomplices who were willing to turn in their partners, for activities which contributed to the conviction of the perpetrators of serious crimes.

From here our present system of offering rewards and pardons came about Increasingly, ordinary Londoners left the task of turning in criminals to groups of people who were motivated to do so by the prospect of financial or other rewards.    This eventually led to the establishment of organized police organizations.

As today, we have police services and private security services.     This came about when individuals were required to patrol their communities and had a responsibility to ensure that the laws of the day were upheld and there was some deterrent to lawlessness.   These duties were conducted by individuals as volunteers on top of their normal employment.     It was thus lawbreakers were brought to justice and the notion of the present day “civil arrest powers”.

Traditionally, householders were required to served in the office of constable by appointment or rotation.    During their year of office they performed the duties of the office part-time alongside their normal employment.    Similarly, men were expected to serve by rotation on the nightly watch.    From early in this period, however, many householders could financially afford to pay somebody else to act as a deputy for them to serve in their place thus avoiding individual obligations.

As this practice increased, some men were able to make a living out of acting as deputy constables or as paid night watchmen.     In the case of night watchmen, this procedure was formalised in many parts of London in the eighteenth century by the passage of "Watch Acts", which replaced householders' duty of service by a tax, which was levied for the purpose of hiring full-time watchmen. Some prosecution societies also hired men to patrol their areas.

The advent of salaried constables and watchmen who were responsible for patrolling the streets means that several characteristics of a modern police force were already present in eighteenth-century London: the streets were regularly patrolled by men whose job it was to prevent crime and arrest suspects. Such men walked regular beats, and some wore uniforms.

Concern about high levels of crime in London in the late seventeenth century led the government to adopt the practice of offering substantial rewards for apprehending and convicting those guilty of specific serious crimes, such as highway robbery and coining.    This practice expanded in the eighteenth century, and was supplemented by individual victims of crime who offered rewards for the return of their stolen goods.

In order to encourage victims to report crimes, magistrates in both the City of London and Middlesex established "rotation offices" in the 1730s where Londoners could be certain of finding a magistrate present at fixed hours.    This introduced a new practice by employing thief-takers as "runners" who, when a crime was reported, could be sent out by the magistrates to detect and apprehend the culprit.     The aim of this new system was to deter criminals by increasing the certainty that they would be detected and prosecuted.

By the end of the eighteenth century, therefore, London already had not only a substantial body of watchmen who were employed to prevent crime, but also a system of detective policing designed to play a major role in apprehending suspected criminals.

In the first decades of the nineteenth century attempts to combat crime shifted back towards the prevention of crime, as opposed to the detection of criminals.    New horse and foot patrols were introduced both at night and during the day, and these men were frequently referred to as "police".     Efforts to rationalise and further extend London's system of policing, which date back to the mid-eighteenth century, were finally successful in 1829 with the introduction of Robert Peel's Metropolitan Police Force.     Uniformed and carrying truncheons, the new "Bobbies" (named after Robert Peel) were expected to patrol the streets on prescribed beats, so frequently that there would be no opportunity to carry out crimes.

Although arguably the only really new aspect of the Metropolitan Police was centralised control, the new arrangements did place much greater weight on prevention (though the constables employed by the stipendiary magistrates continued to work as detectives).    The Bobbies represent the culmination of more than a century-long transformation of responsibility for policing in London from private householders to agents of the state.

Before Queensland became a state in 1859 it was necessary to establish some form of police presence and in 1842 the first police establishment was set up in the port of Brisbane with a Police Magistrate and a Chief Constable and four constables.

Not much more happened until 1851 when the police strength was increased and the introduction of horse patrols.   From here there was a quick expansion of police services in other Queensland towns.    It was not until 1952 that Maleny had a permanent police presence.

The principles of Neighbourhood Watch today are as important as they were about 400 years ago.    The wheel has almost turned a full circle with civilians being the eyes and ears of the official police service.