Police

Etymology

First attested in English in the early 15th century, originally in a range of senses encompassing ' policy; state; public order', the word police comes from Middle French police, in turn from Latin politia, which is the romanization of the Ancient Greek πολιτεία 'citizenship, administration, civil polity'. This is derived from πόλις 'city'.

Development of theory

wrote that the contemporary concept of police as a paid and funded functionary of the state was developed by German and French legal scholars and practitioners in public administration and statistics in the 17th and early 18th centuries, most notably with Nicolas Delamare's Traité de la Police, first published in 1705. The German Polizeiwissenschaft first theorized by Philipp von Hörnigk, a 17th-century Austrian political economist and civil servant, and much more famously by Johann Heinrich Gottlob Justi, who produced an important theoretical work known as Cameral science on the formulation of police. Foucault cites Magdalene Humpert author of Bibliographie der Kameralwissenschaften in which the author makes note of a substantial bibliography was produced of over 4,000 pieces of the practice of Polizeiwissenschaft. However, this may be a mistranslation of Foucault's own work since the actual source of Magdalene Humpert states over 14,000 items were produced from the 16th century dates ranging from 1520 to 1850.
As conceptualized by the Polizeiwissenschaft, according to Foucault the police had an administrative, economic and social duty. It was in charge of demographic concerns and needed to be incorporated within the western political philosophy system of raison d'état and therefore giving the superficial appearance of empowering the population, which, according to mercantilist theory, was to be the main strength of the state. Thus, its functions largely overreached simple law enforcement activities and included public health concerns, urban planning, and surveillance of prices.
File:Jeremy Bentham by Henry William Pickersgill.jpg|thumb|upright|Jeremy Bentham, philosopher who advocated for the establishment of preventive police forces and influenced the reforms of Sir Robert Peel
The concept of preventive policing, or policing to deter crime from taking place, gained influence in the late 18th century. Police Magistrate John Fielding, head of the Bow Street Runners, argued that "...it is much better to prevent even one man from being a rogue than apprehending and bringing forty to justice."
The Utilitarian philosopher, Jeremy Bentham, promoted the views of Italian Marquis Cesare Beccaria, and disseminated a translated version of "Essay on Crime in Punishment". Bentham espoused the guiding principle of "the greatest good for the greatest number":

It is better to prevent crimes than to punish them. This is the chief aim of every good system of legislation, which is the art of leading men to the greatest possible happiness or to the least possible misery, according to calculation of all the goods and evils of life.

Patrick Colquhoun's influential work, A Treatise on the Police of the Metropolis was heavily influenced by Benthamite thought. Colquhoun's Thames River Police was founded on these principles, and in contrast to the Bow Street Runners, acted as a deterrent by their continual presence on the riverfront, in addition to being able to intervene if they spotted a crime in progress.
Edwin Chadwick's 1829 article, "Preventive police" in the London Review, argued that prevention ought to be the primary concern of a police body, which was not the case in practice. The reason, argued Chadwick, was that "A preventive police would act more immediately by placing difficulties in obtaining the objects of temptation." In contrast to a deterrent of punishment, a preventive police force would deter criminality by making crime cost-ineffective – "crime doesn't pay". In the second draft of his 1829 Police Act, the "object" of the new Metropolitan Police, was changed by Robert Peel to the "principal object," which was the "prevention of crime." Later historians would attribute the perception of England's "appearance of orderliness and love of public order" to the preventive principle entrenched in Peel's police system.
Development of modern police forces around the world was contemporary to the formation of the state, later defined by sociologist Max Weber as achieving a "monopoly on the legitimate use of physical force" and which was primarily exercised by the police and the military. Marxist theory situates the development of the modern state as part of the rise of capitalism, in which the police are one component of the bourgeoisie's repressive apparatus for subjugating the working class. By contrast, the Peelian principles argue that "the power of the police... is dependent on public approval of their existence, actions and behavior", a philosophy known as policing by consent.

Personnel and organization

Police forces include both preventive police and detectives. Terminology varies from country to country. Police functions include protecting life and property, enforcing criminal law, criminal investigations, regulating traffic, crowd control, public safety duties, civil defense, emergency management, searching for missing persons, lost property and other duties concerned with public order. Regardless of size, police forces are generally organized as a hierarchy with multiple ranks. The exact structures and the names of rank vary considerably by country.

Uniformed

The police who wear uniforms make up the majority of a police service's personnel. Their main duty is to respond to calls for service. When not responding to these calls, they do work aimed at preventing crime, such as patrols. The uniformed police are known by varying names such as preventive police, the uniform branch/division, administrative police, order police, the patrol bureau/division, or patrol. In Australia and the United Kingdom, patrol personnel are also known as "general duties" officers. Atypically, Brazil's preventive police are known as Military Police.
As stated by the name, uniformed police wear uniforms. They perform functions that require an immediate recognition of an officer's legal authority and a potential need for force. Most commonly this means intervening to stop a crime in progress and securing the scene of a crime that has already happened. Besides dealing with crime, these officers may also manage and monitor traffic, carry out community policing duties, maintain order at public events or carry out searches for missing people. As most of these duties must be available as a 24/7 service, uniformed police are required to do shift work.

Detectives

Police detectives are responsible for investigations and detective work. Detectives may be called Investigations Police, Judiciary/Judicial Police, or Criminal Police. In the United Kingdom, they are often referred to by the name of their department, the Criminal Investigation Department. Detectives typically make up roughly 15–25% of a police service's personnel.
Detectives, in contrast to uniformed police, typically wear business-styled attire in bureaucratic and investigative functions, where a uniformed presence would be either a distraction or intimidating but a need to establish police authority still exists. "Plainclothes" officers dress in attire consistent with that worn by the general public for purposes of blending in.
In some cases, police are assigned to work "undercover", where they conceal their police identity to investigate crimes, such as organized crime or narcotics crime, that are unsolvable by other means. In some cases, this type of policing shares aspects with espionage.
The relationship between detective and uniformed branches varies by country. In the United States, there is high variation within the country itself. Many American police departments require detectives to spend some time on temporary assignments in the patrol division. The argument is that rotating officers helps the detectives to better understand the uniformed officers' work, to promote cross-training in a wider variety of skills, and prevent "cliques" that can contribute to corruption or other unethical behavior. Conversely, some countries regard detective work as being an entirely separate profession, with detectives working in separate agencies and recruited without having to serve in uniform. A common compromise in English-speaking countries is that most detectives are recruited from the uniformed branch, but once qualified they tend to spend the rest of their careers in the detective branch.
Another point of variation is whether detectives have extra status. In some forces, such as the New York Police Department and Philadelphia Police Department, a regular detective holds a higher rank than a regular police officer. In others, such as British police and Canadian police, a regular detective has equal status with regular uniformed officers. Officers still have to take exams to move to the detective branch, but the move is regarded as being a specialization, rather than a promotion.

Volunteers and auxiliary

Police services often include part-time or volunteer officers, some of whom have other jobs outside policing. These may be paid positions or entirely volunteer. These are known by a variety of names, such as reserves, auxiliary police or special constables.
Other volunteer organizations work with the police and perform some of their duties. Groups in the U.S. including the Retired and Senior Volunteer Program, Community Emergency Response Team, and the Boy Scouts Police Explorers provide training, traffic and crowd control, disaster response, and other policing duties. In the U.S., the Volunteers in Police Service program assists over 200,000 volunteers in almost 2,000 programs. Volunteers may also work on the support staff. Examples of these schemes are Volunteers in Police Service in the US, Police Support Volunteers in the UK and Volunteers in Policing in New South Wales.