
Peelian Principles - cstross
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peelian_Principles
======
PaulKeeble
I wouldn't say all these principles are in force in the UK today. The very
fact that our police is routinely used to break up peaceful demonstrations, to
stop demonstrations from occurring in areas were our politicians might see
them is kind of a perversion of one of the key points.

The officers do still wear the numbers but they are routinely covered up to
hide their identities, especially when they are dealing with a demonstration.

The police have arrest targets just like everywhere else now, the headline
figures are still types of crime per 100k of population but they have other
targets within the organisation that are just like everywhere else.

"The police are the public and the public are the police." \- What trust there
was in the police force has been declining since the break up of the miner
protests in the 80's. The unnecessary aggression and brutality of the police
force keeps happening and with each violent act they are seen more and more as
a gang rather than as other citizens doing what any other citizen can do.

My general feeling is that the police is more and more being used in the UK as
a political vehicle to maintain power against an ever annoyed public, its not
by consent when they break up a peaceful protest because the government passed
laws that said all protests must be registered and agreed to. It might one day
have been like that but its not based on these principles today.

~~~
tehwalrus
Some of the positives of this system of justice do still remain - Personally,
I would still approach a UK police officer in the street to ask for help
without fear[1], whereas I don't think I'd ever go and ask for help from a US
cop except in the direst of circumstances (mainly because of their reputation,
and that they are all armed).

That said, your criticisms of the current force are definitely valid ones, and
I would like to see them addressed by a political movement to restore these
principles in full to British policing.

[1] with a few exceptions - not armed officers at airports, or police officers
at protests whether or not in riot gear.

~~~
coolsunglasses
> I don't think I'd ever go and ask for help from a US cop except in the
> direst of circumstances

Pretty silly. Most, if not all, cops I've encountered have been decent and
helpful human beings.

The primary source of ongoing friction with cops usually has to do with racial
tensions in inner cities, especially in LA.

Their being armed doesn't change anything, plenty of everyday non-police
citizens walking around armed too. No reason for fear.

~~~
tehwalrus
> plenty of everyday non-police citizens walking around armed too.

This is not a reason _not_ to be afraid. I'll spare you my big rant, though,
as I probably won't convince you.

------
Pitarou
I'd draw people's attention, in particular, to this principle:

> Whether the police are effective is not measured on the number of arrests,
> but on the lack of crime.

This is in contrast to the US, where a cop's career prospects largely depend
on his arrest record. To see where this has led, read _Arrest-Proof Yourself_
by Dale C. Carson.

(By the way, I don't actually live in the US, so if you want to tell me I'm an
idiot and I don't know what I'm talking about I'll have no comeback.)

~~~
anvandare
See also Campbell's law, and Goodhart's law.

It's only human. If your employment evaluation depends on a specific statistic
(the number of arrests you made, lines of code written, number of pupils
passing the test, etc.) then you'll try to keep that statistic on a favourable
level; even if doing so fails the original intent behind it all.

~~~
notdrunkatall
Incentives incentivize things; who knew?

------
midas007
In the US, Europe and elsewhere, the S.O.P. is "Might makes right" => "We're
going to beat the shit out of you if we feel like it, and there's nothing you
can do about it. Oh and we're going to rob (whatever personal property or
money is on you) too.* _"

_ * This happens not in a "3rd-world country," but in the U.S. of A.

~~~
pjc50
_Some_ areas of the US are more "3rd-world country" than the people care to
acknowledge. Mostly due to the legacy of colonialism.

Economy based on manual labour for resource extraction or farming? Yup.

History of racial conflict from the time of slavery? Yup.

Poor rule of law linked to family and business corruption? Yup.

Excessively violent policing as a result of those factors? Yup.

~~~
brg
I dispute this claim. In the last two decades, the most high profile cases of
police malfeasance are coming from LA and Seattle. These have nothing to do
with colonialism, but with complete lack of oversight and responsibility.

~~~
midas007
Exactly. The pattern is:

1\. cops do whatever they want 2\. they become more and more emboldened 3\.
something awful happens to an "innocent" person 4\. temporary measures are put
in place 5\. delay 10 6\. goto 1

------
threeseed
One thing people need to remember is that in France, UK, Australia, Canada etc
guns are illegal. That makes a big difference since police know that provided
they don't invade someone's personal space they aren't at risk of dying. And
as such they are able to resolve issues without needing to act with a
defensive posture.

It may seem arbitrary but you will never think of a policeman as an ordinary
citizen if they aren't willing to engage with you in a normal manner.

~~~
mortyseinfeld
The first thing authoritarian states do is take the guns.

~~~
riffraff
That historically did not happen.

Fascism under Mussolini did create a law about guns. It did this many years
after the PNF took power, and the law only states that you have to _declare_
"substantial changes" in your ownership of weapons[0].

The same happened with nazi germany. There was a weapons law enacted in 1938,
about five years after books had been burned, the gestapo had been installed
and concentration camps for political opposition had been created.

This law deregulated the acquisition of firearms, which had been regulated
since 1919[1].

[0]
[http://www.sanzioniamministrative.it/collegamenti/I%20Codici...](http://www.sanzioniamministrative.it/collegamenti/I%20Codici/TULPS/TULPS.htm)
[1]
[http://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=402...](http://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=4029&context=flr)

------
visarga
Even if they state they intend to protect individual freedoms, there is no
guarantee. Reality shows that all systems can be perverted and all rules
reinterpreted to mean something else.

~~~
midas007
It's a book ideal that doesn't recognize reality: the fallibility and self-
interests of individuals.

~~~
cstross
So kindly explain what's wrong, in principle, with defining book ideals and
then using these as criteria to evaluate the success of organizations?

The Peelian principles have been largely obscured or ignored in recent
decades, and arguably they were always a bit hollow -- but the history of
British policing since the 1830s has had significantly less emphasis on raw
offensive firepower than other police systems: even today the vast majority of
British cops do not ever carry guns, and per a 2006 poll of members of the
Police Federation, 82% of officers don't want to routinely carry guns:

[http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-19641398](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-19641398)

This demonstrates, if nothing else, that even after 170-180 years a high-
minded book ideal can have a long term effect on an institution (even though
we as a species seem to be extremely bad at keeping institutions on track on
any time frame longer than a human working lifespan).

And, if I may editorialize a little, being aware that it is _possible_ to
constitute a police force along radically unfamiliar lines should free us from
the tyranny of low expectations that leads us to assume that current abuses of
police powers are inevitable and unexceptional.

We can do better, and we deserve better.

~~~
rjknight
Indeed, I think there's something a bit too fatalistic about the idea that the
police must automatically be bad because the very nature of authority is
corrupting. It's somewhat similar to genetically-deterministic evo-psych, or
arguments that group X will behave in a certain way because of their
privileges or sufferings. There might be a _tendency_ toward that pattern of
behaviour, but tendencies can be overcome. In social science there are rarely
any iron rules of behaviour.

~~~
cstross
The real question is how we design robust institutional cultures that don't
deteriorate over time, and adhere to the original mission goals. (And also how
we free ourselves from the tyranny of low expectations, so that we can set
_good_ goals rather than accepting bad outcomes as inevitable.)

Note that Peel's Principles were in no small part to address the public order
aftermath of the Peterloo Massacre:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peterloo_massacre](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peterloo_massacre)

Prior to the huge wave of policing and justice reforms of the 1830s, in the UK
not only were there no real organized police forces, but what policing there
was relied on local bailiffs, freelance for-profit thief-takers (google
"Jonathan Wilde" for an extraordinary example of just how wrong for-profit
policing can go!), and in extremis, the army (who, at Peterloo, sent a cavalry
charge into a large crowd who were demonstrating for electoral reform: many
dead, many hundreds injured).

Some sort of reform was clearly necessary, and the drawbacks of a military
style of public order enforcement was glaringly obvious: hence the attempt at
re-inventing the entire concept of policing.

~~~
icegreentea
Kinda ironic that you describe the problem as "military style of public order
enforcement", since one of the hallmarks and necessities of the very reforms
was the centralization of policing, and the imposition of various military-
like organization on the police in an attempt to increase visibility,
accountability, and legitimacy.

In fact, I don't think the question isn't so much how to design robust
cultures that do not "deteriorate over time", but how to design systems that
are amenable to reform despite "deterioration". Basically, I'm making the
claim that that on the micro-level, that every day, or year to year life of an
institution, negative effects will tend to out-weight positives. And I'm going
to argue that from the standpoint of entropy. So in other words, sure, we want
to create systems that are robust, as in they can maintain their culture at
some set level, but it's even more important to ensure that we can "reset" the
system at relatively low cost.

~~~
cstross
In your country, are the Fire service, Ambulance service, or Coast Guard,
necessarily military? Because they were uniforms, have rank structures,
operate heavy equipment, and are government employees.

(Yes, this is a trick question. In some countries these _are_ paramilitary
organizations and services -- or provided by private corporations. But in the
UK, they're civilian government agencies that are explicitly non-military.
It's possible to have a centralized, hierarchical uniformed state agency that
isn't militaries and isn't there to point guns at the public. That's the point
I'm trying to make here.)

Your secondary point about systems needing to be amenable to reform is a good
one. Too much rigidity and inflexibility makes reform hard: but it may also
help prevent corruption. Which aspect wins out probably has something to do
with the type of people the organization recruits -- are they dedicated to
public service, or are they attracted to a role where they get to carry a gun
and wear a uniform and are feared by the public? My gut feeling is that
authoritarian followers (per Altermayer) are a _really bad_ fit for community
policing ... but unfortunately uniformed armed services are attractive to such
personality types.

~~~
icegreentea
I readily accept your first point. I guess I messed up my delivery of the
first point. It wasn't meant so much as a rebuttal or counterpoint, but
something of a "random aside". The point wasn't that they "militarized" the
police, especially in the way militarized is often used today in the context
of American law enforcement (with the implications of increased use of
aggressive force), but rather that its kinda funny that their solution to
trying to back off on the level of violence was to impose aspects of military
like control.

Of course, in the long view it's pretty obvious why that happened. Consider
why modern western militaries are structured and organized the way they are.
The state has a monopoly on force, which requires not just the owning the
army, but to be able to control the application of force down to the level of
individual soldier. Obviously the control can never be perfect, but I think
its pretty clear that it typically works well enough.

I guess my point is that especially in the context of the 19th century,
militarization has two orthogonal aspects, the first being the nature and
quantity of force to apply, and the second being control of force, and that
when faced with the problem of overly aggressive police action, they sought to
apply control by applying aspects of military organization - aspects which the
military could claim to "own" first, just because they were only groups around
with that type of organization at that time.

------
Thiz
Abuse of authority only comes from the public sector (aka as government). In
the private sector you get a complaint and you're fired.

Private defense and private security is the future.

------
aragot
Let's link that to HackerNews: How could we revisit those rules at the age of
Internet?

~~~
PavlovsCat
No more anonymous downvotes and flagging, for one?

> Every police officer should be issued an identification number, to assure
> accountability for his actions.

------
judk
In social contract theory, the entire government apparatus is supposedly
dependent on the consent of the governed.

------
judk
> and without regard to the justice or injustice of the substance of
> individual laws, by

Hmm.

------
makmanalp
Wow, this is exactly what we need in Turkey, where there is deep political
conflict going on. Recently, there have been ongoing protests
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_protests_in_Turkey](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_protests_in_Turkey)).
There is a long history of police brutality in Turkey
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Police_brutality#Turkey](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Police_brutality#Turkey)),
but at least recently we had thought that the police was largely supportive of
the current political party (AKP), as key positions were manned largely by AKP
supporters, placed there by the government.

Now, the government is having a conflict
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_corruption_scandal_in_Turk...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_corruption_scandal_in_Turkey))
with the Gulen Movement
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%BClen_movement](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%BClen_movement)),
which they used to be buddy-buddy with, and now _no one_ seems to trust the
police anymore, not even the government themselves. The government has been
sacking police chiefs and reassigning commanders all over the country, in an
attempt to break up any Gulen supporters, and to seize power over the police
again.

Looking at the Peelian principles, they've failed 1 many times before by
taping over helmet identification numbers ([http://www.ataturk.org/wp-
content/uploads/2013/07/same-story...](http://www.ataturk.org/wp-
content/uploads/2013/07/same-story-Turkish-police-hides-their-id-numbers.jpg))
and they've also failed 3 many times by engaging in cronyist tactics to avoid
prosecution and accountability, even with evidence.

Looking over the principles of policing, they've failed #2 since there has
been widespread condemnation of police brutality, and the force is still
there. They failed #4 when riot police attacked a camp of sleeping peaceful
protesters at 4am with tear gas and batons. They failed #5, since the police
chiefs are appointed by the current political party, and thus are not
impartial. #6 is the same as #4. #8 goes along with #5, and also when police
have been seen attacking people of specific political leanings, or refusing to
carry out orders to arrest people of their own political leanings.

My two main observations from all this are: First, like the judiciary, I
believe the police force should also be completely isolated from the executive
branch in terms of receiving orders and in terms of placement, hiring and
firing of personnel. This prevents them becoming cronies of the current
political power, and follows separation of powers.

Second, I believe that the police should be paid at least average salary (way
above poverty level) and be required to have at least average education (not
merely primary school education). Otherwise, it becomes difficult to have the
sorts of people who can meditate on concepts like cronyism, whistleblowing,
consent of the governed, blindly following orders, etc. It becomes easier to
have the sorts of people who are poor and likely to accept bribes, politically
fired up and filled with hatred, power tripping.

------
w_t_payne
That is very interesting. I had no idea.

