The Modern Police: An Aberration

Article by The Heron

‍Historians widely agree that the technological wave of the Industrial Revolution significantly improved the administrative capabilities of states, reshaping them from limited organisations into increasingly powerful juggernauts.[1] While many of these unprecedented developments historically aroused significant opposition and continue to provoke mostly meretricious rightist resistance, one appears to have overcome its initial public relations hurdles and positioned itself as indispensable among the vast majority of people: the modern police.

Across the industrialised world, studies and polls suggest that people view the existence of the modern police as a given, with a significant portion expressing trust in their respective institutions. In the United Kingdom, 64 per cent reported that they trusted their local police force,[2] while in the United States 74 per cent of adults claimed they had confidence in their local police.[3] If one moves past the “local police” distinction, trust decreases yet remains strong. In Germany, 53 per cent trust the police; in the Netherlands 56 per cent; in Singapore 52 per cent; and in France 52 per cent. For the same countries, distrust stood at only 17, 14, 21, and 18 per cent respectively.[4] While these numbers are more than solid, they do not hold a candle to the level of trust Chinese citizens have for their police – an estimated 80 per cent.[5]

When questioning people about their view of the police, it is exceedingly rare for polling organisations or researchers to explore whether citizens believe the institution should exist at all. Its presence is taken for granted to such an extent that the very idea of abolishing the police is so outré that it does not even register as a possibility. Some may suspect that participants who view the police as untrustworthy may be inclined to favour its abolishment, but this does not appear to be the case to any meaningful degree. During the polarising, police-oriented political climate following George Floyd’s murder, a 2020 Gallup poll asked Americans about their thoughts regarding the “most extreme proposal”: abolishing police departments in response to police misconduct. Despite the elevated levels of police hatred at the time, only 15 per cent supported the idea.[6] The proposal under consideration was not the unconditional elimination of the police as an institution, but a conditional response to misbehavior; departments would be disbanded only if they failed to meet acceptable standards, while those that behaved properly would be permitted to continue. The disbanded departments would not thereafter leave a vacuum. Rather, the proposal involved setting up “different public safety models” following the deed, which can reasonably be interpreted as replacing the police with police. In other words, even in a political climate unusually hostile to the institution, the idea of unconditionally and permanently abolishing the modern police remained unthinkable – not only for the pollsters, but for the respondents themselves.[7]

By and large, the police is viewed as a necessary and even positive facet of society. They are not only widely perceived as enforcers, but also as protectors.[8] Indeed, it appears like a world without the modern police – that is, a professional and state-authorised organisation tasked with detecting, investigating, and preventing crimes as well as pursuing and arresting offenders[9] – is unimaginable for most. But that is precisely what reality looked like prior to the Industrial Revolution. In fact, not only did police, as we understand it, not exist, but most preindustrial people would most likely have been deeply concerned, if not horrified, at the thought of such an institution wielding the immense power in society it does today.

In ancient Athens, there appears to have been a proto-police slave force called the Scythian archers, but they were not tasked with assisting private individuals in their disputes with criminals, instead focusing on keeping order within the polis. For the ancient Athenian, succour against criminals was provided by kin, friends, or bystanders. The type of criminal mattered little; whether it was a thief or a brawling brute, the Athenian routinely relied on his close contacts for justice. Indeed, even such matters as the apprehension of and extraction of recompense from the perpetrator following a victory in court usually required the assistance of private contacts. In essence, the ancient Athenian had to carry out significant “self-policing.”[10]

The Romans operated similarly. Just like in Athens, there were in some periods rudimentary forms of police like the aediles, but they were mainly concerned with administrative tasks such as ensuring the upkeep and maintenance of aqueducts and other infrastructure as well as supervising public morals and detecting foul play in markets. Beyond these settings, private disputes between victim and perpetrator were of little interest to them.[11] The Romans were ardent believers in self-help, so much so that it was a “cardinal principle of Roman law.” Consequently, every Roman relied on relatives or, if wealthy, on retinues to thwart security threats and seek justice.[12]

The medieval era followed the same patterns. Some policing institutions began to be developed, but “their existence was often brief and limited in scope.”[13] Moreover, many of these institutions focused mainly on eliminating threats to the functioning of the state, rather than dedicating themselves to the personal disputes of commoners.[14] Owing to this, solving both petty and serious crimes, as well as pursuing the offenders, was dependent upon the victim and his kin or community.[15] This state of affairs continued relatively undisturbed during the sixteenth- and early seventeenth century.[16]

Beyond Europe, early forms of the police were not any more vivacious. In late imperial China, the presence of law enforcement was limited to such an extent that “most [offenses] were dealt with by unofficial mediators within the family, clan, village community or guild.”[17] In Kamakura Japan, rural communities relied mostly on themselves for solving internal disputes as well as defending against predatory external foes, a reality which appears to have continued with relatively slight changes well into the Tokugawa period.[18] Beneath every provincial governor in Mughal India were two forms of police: Faujadars and Kotwals. The former dealt with guarding the roads and pursuing bandits, whereas the latter was an urban police with similar tasks. Villages, however, “appear to have been largely self-policing.”[19]

In essence, preindustrial police, wherever it existed, concerned themselves mainly with protecting the state. This is why their activities revolved around tasks such as overseeing markets, guarding roads, protecting crucial infrastructure, crushing seditionists, and so forth; all of these ensured the continued functioning of the state. While authorities did sometimes attempt to extend law enforcement into the everyday lives of ordinary people, these efforts achieved only limited success – certainly nothing approaching the success of the modern police. The lack of modern technology made long‑distance travel and communication slow, costly, and inefficient,[20] and preindustrial society itself was highly decentralised – made up of small, isolated, and largely self‑sufficient communities. As a result, there was little practical or political incentive to prioritise the broad and consistent policing of these localities over more urgent concerns.

Inured with the presence of a powerful police force, the modern man may believe that most preindustrial commoners would have shared his predilection of a pervasive state-sponsored armed militia and thus, if the choice was available to them, supported the creation of a modern police institution in order to, as contemporary parlance would put it, “protect” their societies from the depredations of criminals. But this view is not supported by the historical literature. In fact, the opposite seems to be the case: most preindustrial people were content with their local policing systems and were suspicious, often hostile, to the extension of state-sponsored law enforcement into their personal lives.

During the late Roman Republic, lower classes viewed “official intrusions into local justice with some apprehension.”[21] When the republic transformed into an empire, the Roman lower class view of law enforcement appears to have remained static, or even worsened, in its distrust, especially in regions with relatively high concentration of policemen such as Asia Minor.[22] Similarly, in the second half of the thirteenth century, peasants in the Kamakura shogunate resisted, sometimes violently, the increasing penetration of state authority into their rural localities.[23] In late medieval- and early modern Italy, the sbirri, a state-employed police force, were thoroughly despised by the populace, partly due to their significant foreign element.[24] Even during nineteenth century Europe, when the foundations for modern policing were laid and its power was increasing at an accelerating pace, “all social classes could indulge in the decision to keep the police at arm’s length.” Indeed, numerous communities during this century continued to police themselves, with many ordinary people actively avoiding “reporting matters, not wanting police involvement and preferring to settle matters far from the state’s legal machinery.”[25]

While these examples barely scratch the surface of the number of times local communities expressed their opposition to the interventions of state-sponsored law enforcement, they sufficiently help illustrate the immense difference in mentality between the preindustrial and modern man with regard to the police. The former generally harboured a kind of intense, largely irreconcilable distrust towards the faceless state and its enforcers, preferring community self-policing in accordance to local customs; the latter has been indoctrinated so thoroughly that he all too often cannot distinguish between the modern institution of the police, of whom he has exceedingly little control over, and the act of policing, which even the members of the most primitive societies do on a regular basis. Preindustrial man cherished his high degree of independence from the state. Modern man has been so thoroughly domesticated that not only has he lost his independence, but he now often finds examples of independence and freedom to be defective.

Nevertheless, despite the resistance of many communities, the ideas of the Enlightenment combined with the technological enhancement of state power provided by the Industrial Revolution eventually paved the way for the modern police to become an unquestionable and pervasive presence in society. But the purpose of the police has not changed: just like in preindustrial times, the primary purpose of this institution is to protect and strengthen the state, not the people. “Why have the police’s duties expanded to include the assistance of victims in personal disputes if the main purpose remains the protection of the state?” one may ask. The answer lies in the nature of modern industrial society. The technologies brought forth by the Industrial Revolution have created a highly interconnected and complex social system in which disruptions can spread far beyond their origin. The state’s monopoly on the legitimate use of force must therefore not only be established, but also become more absolute and totalising in order to preserve its stability in light of the greater risks that come from individuals settling disputes violently in an increasingly intertwined environment. As a result, conflicts that in earlier societies might have been handled by families, kin groups, communities, or the individuals themselves are increasingly redirected to state authorities. Modern police intervention in personal disputes is therefore a structural necessity – not moral “progress.”

To illustrate this further, consider the duel. During large parts of the preindustrial era, the duel –  a highly stylised form of combat between two men to redeem and protect their honour – was widespread among Western elites. Although there were always critics of the practice, they were few and rarely influential enough to deal it any meaningful blow. The decline of the practice only began during the early industrial era (late 18th century) when violence in general was confronted by increasingly trenchant criticism. By the middle of the nineteenth century, the duel died out in England – and in particularly impure form. In contrast to its previous iterations, the duel of the nineteenth century had, partly as a result of the increasingly powerful role of the police, been diluted to such an extent that it involved considerably less violence. Moreover, the decline and end of dueling corresponded with a rise in safer, more controlled confrontations such as litigating each other in court or launching attacks through the media. Of course, the replacement of the duel with these non-violent and legally sanctioned practices was because “the idea of manhood and its honor had changed to fit a new industrial England.”[26]

The duel had thrived when society was considerably less complex and interconnected, and states were correspondingly less interested in intervening in interpersonal violence. But as the Industrial Revolution transformed the world, the duel, although only directly involving two people fighting in a stylised form, was persecuted for its systemic implications: exaltation of violence became problematic in the increasingly interconnected society industrialisation produced. The duel could inspire other forms of violence and thereby disrupt the smooth functioning of the System. Consequently, the duel as well as violent acts more generally were subject to criminalisation and by extension increasing police intervention.[27]

As technology develops and the Industrial System becomes all the more interconnected, the police will, as the historical overview above demonstrates, continue exerting even more control over the actions of the populace. Indeed, this development can be observed in every industrialised country today with only superficial variations in form. This is no accident, nor the result of pure malevolence among the world’s governments – it is a convergence of purely technical demands in a global society with an increasingly similar set of technological conditions. As laws proliferate to manage the growing complexity of technological life, enforcement must expand alongside them. At the same time, new technologies make unprecedented forms of police control possible. Surveillance cameras and wire-tapping are old news; new policing technologies include surveillance systems capable of identifying and tracking individuals in real time,[28] license plate readers,[29] phone tracking that maps movement,[30] predictive algorithms that attempt to anticipate behavior,[31] and the construction of increasingly detailed and efficient electronic dossiers.[32] Not to mention the more dramatic manifestations, such as drones[33] and robotic dogs.[34]

In sum, the modern police institution, while highly successful in convincing a huge portion of the populace of its necessity and altruistic intentions, is historically aberrant. Prior to the Industrial Revolution, the idea of a large, faceless organisation wielding immense power over personal lives at the expense of local autonomy would have been perceived as unacceptable. The modern police’s rapid growth was not accepted all at once, but through gradual, generational adaptation: each incremental expansion of policing power was absorbed and normalised along with the whole complex of technological life. Through such a process of social evolution, conditions that would have been intolerable to prior generations have come to be regarded as natural, necessary, and inevitable. Modern man may find this poisoned chalice to be acceptable, but this he does at his own peril; as modern technology continues to make humanity redundant, the police, motivated by its unbending purpose, will probably be among the first arms of the System to have its mask slip.

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NOTES: ‍

[1] Among others, see Randall D. Law, ‘The Origins of Modern Terrorism’, in The Cambridge World History of Violence, Volume IV: 1800 to the Present, ed. Louise Edwards, Nigel Penn and Jay Winter (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020), 536 and Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers (London: Fontana, 1989).

[2] Benedict Vigers, ‘Britons’ Trust in Courts and Police Declines’, Gallup News, 18 December 2025, available at: https://news.gallup.com/poll/699710/britons-trust-courts-police-declines.aspx.

[3] Megan Brenan, ‘Racial Divide on Policing Narrows in Years Since Floyd’s Death’, Gallup News, 23 May 2025, available at: https://news.gallup.com/poll/690959/racial-divide-policing-narrows-years-floyd-death.aspx.

[4] Ipsos, Ipsos Global Trustworthiness Index 2024 (October 2024), https://www.ipsos.com/sites/default/files/ct/news/documents/2024-11/ipsos-global-trustworthiness-index-2024.pdf.

[5] Ipsos, Global Trust in Professions: Who Do Global Citizens Trust the Most? (August 2019), https://www.ipsos.com/sites/default/files/ct/news/documents/2019-09/global-trust-in-professions-trust-worthiness-index-2019.pdf.

[6] Steve Crabtree, ‘Americans Say Policing Needs Major Changes’, Gallup News, 22 July 2020, available at: https://news.gallup.com/poll/315962/americans-say-policing-needs-major-changes.aspx. This number probably included many who would have ticked the “untrustworthy” box in the police trust question, but it also evidently excluded many of them as well.

[7] There is nothing to suggest other heavily industrialised countries would present drastically different survey results.

[8] Rich Morin, Kim Parker, Renee Stepler and Andrew Mercer, ‘Comparing Police Views and Public Views’, Pew Research Center, 11 January 2017, available at: https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2017/01/11/police-views-public-views/.

[9] See Clive Emsley, A Short History of Police & Policing (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021).

[10] Clive Emsley, A Short History of Police & Policing (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021), 15 and Matthew Trundle, “Violence, Law and Community in Classical Athens,” in The Cambridge World History of Violence: Volume I, The Prehistoric and Ancient Worlds, ed. Garret G. Fagan, Linda Fibiger, Mark Hudson and Matthew Trundle (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020), 536–43.

[11] Clive Emsley, A Short History of Police & Policing (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021), 17-18

[12] Garret G. Fagan, “Roman Violence: Attitudes and Practice,” in The Cambridge World History of Violence: Volume I, The Prehistoric and Ancient Worlds, ed. Garret G. Fagan, Linda Fibiger, Mark Hudson and Matthew Trundle (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020), 562

[13] Clive Emsley, A Short History of Police & Policing (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021), 27

[14] Ibid., among others, 31, 40, and 51

[15] Ibid., 26, 28, 51

[16] Ibid., 52

[17] Klaus Mühlhaln, Criminal Justice in China: A History (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2009), 50-51

[18] For Kamakura claim: Morten Oxenbøll, “Bandits and Peasants in Medieval Japan,” in The Cambridge World History of Violence: Volume II: 500–1500, ed. Matthew Gordon, Richard Kaeuper and Harriet Zurndorfer(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020), most importantly 207-208, but the entire chapter supports this.

For Tokugawa claim: Clive Emsley, A Short History of Police & Policing (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021), 147

[19] Clive Emsley, A Short History of Police & Policing (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021), 150-151

[20] For illustration, in late imperial China, official correspondence within the same province took ten days, while correspondence between Beijing and a distant provincial capital took three months. Klaus Mühlhaln, Making China Modern: From the Great Qing to Xi Jinping (Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2019), 117-118

[21] Jeffrey Tatum, “Gang Violence in the Late Roman Republic,” in The Cambridge World History of Violence: Volume I, The Prehistoric and Ancient Worlds, ed. Garret G. Fagan, Linda Fibiger, Mark Hudson and Matthew Trundle (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020), 400-401

[22] Christopher J. Fuhrmann, ‘“Like a Thief in the Night”: Self‑help, Magisterial Authority, and Civilian Policing’, in Policing the Roman Empire: Soldiers, Administration, and Public Order (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011).

[23] Morten Oxenbøll, “Bandits and Peasants in Medieval Japan,” in The Cambridge World History of Violence: Volume II: 500–1500, ed. Matthew Gordon, Richard Kaeuper and Harriet Zurndorfer(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020), most importantly 222-223

[24] The widespread hate: Steven Hughes, ‘Fear and Loathing in Bologna and Rome: The Papal Police in Perspective’, Journal of Social History, 21/1 (1987), 97–116.

The many foreigners (that is, foreign to the local community being policed) that were employed: Clive Emsley, A Short History of Police & Policing (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021), 41-42

[25] Clive Emsley, A Short History of Police & Policing (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021), 123-124

[26] Wade Ellett, ‘The Death of Dueling’, Historia, 20 (2011), available at: https://www.eiu.edu/historia/2011.pdf and Pieter Spierenburg, ‘Homicide in a Global Perspective: Between Marginalisation and Resurgence’, in The Cambridge World History of Violence, Volume IV: 1800 to the Present, ed. Louise Edwards, Nigel Penn and Jay Winter (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020), 189-190

[27] Ibid.

[28] D. Yuvasini, S. Jegadeesan, Shitharth Selvarajan and Feslin Anish Mon, ‘Enhancing societal security: a multimodal deep learning approach for a public person identification and tracking system’, Scientific Reports 14, article 23952 (2024), https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-024-74560-9.

[29] Kristin Finklea, Law Enforcement and Technology: Use of Automated License Plate Readers, R48160 (19 August 2024), https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/R48160

[30] Bridge Legal, ‘How Police Track Your Phone & What Data They Can Access’, Bridge Legal (25 November 2025), available at: https://bridgelegal.org/how-police-track-your-phone-what-data-they-can-access/.

[31] Among others, see Vikram Dodd, ‘UK creating prediction tool to identify people most likely to kill’, The Guardian (8 April 2025), available at: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/apr/08/uk-creating-prediction-tool-to-identify-people-most-likely-to-kill and Ibrahim Raji and Damilola Bartholomew Sholademi, ‘Predictive Policing: The Role of AI in Crime Prevention’, International Journal of Computer Applications Technology and Research 13, no. 10 (2024): 66–78. DOI: 10.7753/IJCATR1310.1006, available at: https://ijcat.com/archieve/volume13/issue10/ijcatr13101006.pdf.

[32] European Commission, ‘Commission presents roadmap for effective and lawful access to data for law enforcement’, European Commission – DG Home Affairs (24 June 2025), available at: https://home-affairs.ec.europa.eu/news/commission-presents-roadmap-effective-and-lawful-access-data-law-enforcement-2025-06-24_en.

[33] Stuart Whincup, ‘First Responder Drones Used to Catch Criminals’, BBC News, 11 February 2026, available at: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/crk840n70lxo.

[34]Saajan Jogia, ‘Robot Police Dogs Powered by AI Take Over Atlanta’s Streets’, Newsweek, 4 April 2026, available at: https://www.newsweek.com/robot-police-dogs-powered-by-ai-take-over-atlantas-streets-11782889.