The Peelian ideal is genuinely quite good compared to many philosophies of policing in my view, the whole idea that the legitimacy of policing can only come from it being executed from the bottom-up by citizens in uniform rather than top-down from the state’s mandated skull-crackers is pretty progressive for 19th century London. The fact the police aren’t generally armed on this basis is rare internationally and genuinely a good thing in my view.
The problem is like any theory, it doesn’t often survive contact with reality for very long. The gap between the model and reality, and the value of the model itself have obviously been discussed at length elsewhere on here. Also the first ‘Peelers’ were not exactly popular too.
The Peelian ideal is genuinely quite good compared to many philosophies of policing in my view, the whole idea that the legitimacy of policing can only come from it being executed from the bottom-up by citizens in uniform rather than top-down from the state’s mandated skull-crackers is pretty progressive for 19th century London. The fact the police aren’t generally armed on this basis is rare internationally and genuinely a good thing in my view.
The problem is like any theory, it doesn’t often survive contact with reality for very long. The gap between the model and reality, and the value of the model itself have obviously been discussed at length elsewhere on here. Also the first ‘Peelers’ were not exactly popular too.