Police

The concept of police is a modern idea with its roots in the European Enlightenment. The term is rooted etymologically in the ancient Greek term polis, which refers to the city-state as a system of government. The modern notion of a polity, as a system of governance and social ordering, is similarly related. In addition, the concept of police connects to the terms policy and politics, as well as to their derivatives—political, politician, politicize, and so on. The activities that take place under the auspices of police inextricably link to political and policy processes concerned with the governance of populations and territory.

Policing is that form of civil administration concerned with the regulation, disciplining, and ordering of a community, and is usually associated with that department of government concerned with the maintenance of public order, public safety, and the enforcement of laws. It implies a set of activities aimed at preserving the security of a particular social order, or social order in general, that may or may not derive from a consensus of common interest.

Police activities are a specific aspect of social control processes that, for example, exclude punishment. The term also excludes other activities aimed at creating the conditions for social order in the first instance (such as the socialization processes that go on in family or religious institutions and that are aimed at the internalization of ethical controls). Policing is a subset of social control activities distinguished by access to systems of surveillance, coupled with the ability to invoke the threat or use of coercive force, all in the name of the polity, which is the social order writ large. Broadly speaking, policing is concerned with the maintenance of the health of the social body. In contemporary parlance, the police most often denote the regular uniform patrol of public space coupled with post hoc investigation of reported or discovered crime or disorder. Yet there is more to policing than lies with the police, and what meaning lies in the term cannot reduce to mere law enforcement.

Many features of modern police organizations are currently under great challenge. Global changes in the [Page 1122]way civil societies exist have led many commentators to suggest that fundamental changes in the nature and organization of police and policing arise due to what is a new stage of historical and social development; this is a matter considered later.