The Good, The Bad and The Ugly: Policing America

Wilbur Miller investigates the historical background to law enforcement in the United States.

American police forces, in the modern sense of patrols to prevent and detect crime and maintain general order, are products of the nineteenth century. Like their predecessors of colonial times – constables, sheriffs, and nightwatchmen – they were adaptations of English institutions to American social conditions and political ideology.

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