Robert Peel Policing Principles

The metropolitan police act was introduced in 1829 by the then home secretary Robert Peel. The changing landscape and growing urbanisation, due to the industrial revolution, called for more order and a formalisation of police. A less formal system of social control worked well for hundreds of years, particularly in more rural and sparsely populated regions, however the mass genesis to cities for work in the early 19th century made it a lot harder to enforce the law. (Mason, 2004).

Initially, the public feared that a police force would act as part of the military. As result, there was reluctance to agree to them. In order to overcome this opposition, Peel created the primary principles of policing, which is a framework that consists of principles such as; the purpose of the police force is to prevent crime and maintain order, police depend on the consent and trust of the public in order to do their jobs effectively, the primary goal of policing is to achieve voluntary compliance with the law within the community and police officers must remember that they too, are citizens and that their …show more content…
One of the ideals still in practice are that officers are also citizens and their purpose is to serve the public and enforce the law, not serve the interests of their employers or politicians. Another principle still maintained today is the goal that all police actions are enacted with voluntary compliance of the community and that their main purpose is to prevent crimes and maintain order (Melville, 2014). The role of police officers throughout history has been to reassure the public that they decrease the risk of citizens being victimised and that if they do become victims, the perpetrator will be apprehended and punished in some way. Modern day community and neighbourhood policing is the main concept recognisable as still being directly influenced by Peel's original principles (Palmiotto,