# British law enforcement, Peelian Principles and the underclasses **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [December 20, 2024, 12:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/british-law-enforcement-peelian-principles-and-the-underclasses/1011895 "2024-12-20T00:40:37Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2024, 12:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/british-law-enforcement-peelian-principles-and-the-underclasses/1011895/1 "2024-12-20T00:40:37Z")
When Sir Robert Peel founded what is considered to be the first modern municipal police force in London, he had to overcome a historical aversion towards standing law enforcement– an aversion so strong that originally prosecutors had to go through a sophistry of pretending to be private citizens bringing an appeal of law before the government. The [Peelian principles - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peelian_principles) are virtually a code of chivalry for police; the very blueprint of how police can be just and fair, and above all not be an occupying army tyrannically imposing the law on a sullen or even hostile populace. Which is all well and good for the upper or even middle classes, but how did Peel and his successors deal with the existence of a lower class? Poorer neighborhoods inhabited by a populace where it seemingly would be easier to point out who didn’t routinely break the law than who did. Prostitutes and their pimps; pickpockets, thieves, burglars, fences and offenders of property crimes of every description; the violent, the perpetually drunken, indigents, and the list only lacks drug dealers because there were no narcotics laws. Yet as far as I’ve ever heard the enforcement of law in London and the rest of Britain didn’t devolve into a perpetual state of war against the poor and low-born as a class; and not because the British didn’t believe that they weren’t that way congenitally, given the traditional British belief in “breeding” and heritage. So what made the difference and what lessons might US law enforcement take away from Britain’s example? ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2024, 3:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/british-law-enforcement-peelian-principles-and-the-underclasses/1011895/2 "2024-12-20T03:16:30Z")
> [@Lumpy](#): > > Which is all well and good for the upper or even middle classes, but how did Peel and his successors deal with the existence of a lower class? Poorer neighborhoods inhabited by a populace where it seemingly would be easier to point out who didn’t routinely break the law than who did. See, when there was a murder, it was done by someone IN that neighborhood, and most people knew 'who dun it". (This is why Jack the Ripper was unsolved- no clear motive, and no one knew who or why). And the police turned a blind eye to a lot of minor crimes- IF they stayed IN those neighborhoods. The Police knew Jack was killing prostitutes, but they didnt arrest the prostitutes. As long as the violence was kept to a minimum, and the uppers and merchant classes werent disrupted, the police “kept the peace”- the Constables on Patrol could be helpful at time, and _they also knew_ 'the usual suspects". So sure, drunkenness, petty thievery and such went on, but the Police just kept a lid on things getting out of hand. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2024, 6:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/british-law-enforcement-peelian-principles-and-the-underclasses/1011895/3 "2024-12-20T06:56:08Z")
> [@Lumpy](#): > > Yet as far as I’ve ever heard the enforcement of law in London and the rest of Britain didn’t devolve into a perpetual state of war against the poor and low-born as a class Have you heard this _from_ poor and low-born Brits? Especially poor and low-born Brits of colour? Because I doubt [the institutional racism, homophobia etc in the Met](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institutional_racism_in_the_Metropolitan_Police) sprang up suddenly in the 70s. ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2024, 11:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/british-law-enforcement-peelian-principles-and-the-underclasses/1011895/4 "2024-12-20T11:09:34Z")
> [@Lumpy](#): > > Poorer neighborhoods inhabited by a populace where it seemingly would be easier to point out who didn’t routinely break the law than who did. Prostitutes and their pimps; pickpockets, thieves, burglars, fences and offenders of property crimes of every description; the violent, the perpetually drunken, indigents, and the list only lacks drug dealers because there were no narcotics laws. Can I see a cite for that? Because my guess would be that even the poorest neighborhoods largely consisted of decent, hard-working folk who just wanted to make ends meet and avoided committing crimes. ---
**Author:** ![Stanislaus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/stanislaus/32/3391_2.png) [@Stanislaus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stanislaus)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2024, 11:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/british-law-enforcement-peelian-principles-and-the-underclasses/1011895/5 "2024-12-20T11:23:28Z")
As @MrDibble says, definitely worth checking with the poor and lowborn on their experience of Peelian policing. “Police failed to take crimes against sex workers seriously” is a finding that crops up in reports of serial killers into the 21st century. But beyond that, we are by definition: > [@Lumpy](#): > > a populace where it seemingly would be easier to point out who didn’t routinely break the law than who did talking about a criminal class. So at one level, the answer is that policing by consent did not ever mean the consent of criminals. But they were a minority and the Dickensian stew you describe was a very contained phenomenon, to the extent it existed at all - most poor people were law abiding. But in fact, it is criminals who are most likely to be victims of crime. Prostitutes are coerced and robbed by pimps, pimps are mugged, muggers are burgled, burglars are assaulted. Impartial enforcement of the law would have improved the lives of most people in these neighbourhoods. (And in some cases [did](https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/research/centres/cage/manage/publications/bn31.2021.pdf) - violent crime fell after the introduction of the Met. There were of course lots of law-abiding poor, and a lot of policemen would have come from this working class background. In theory that means they are part of the community they’re policing, but it’s often the case that working poor are very strong on ideas like “law and order” and “respectability” which might mean that policing for “decent people” would be different than policing for habitual criminals/victims. Finally, it’s fair to say that the “criminal class” has produced its own countervailing ethos, referred to at the time as “honour among thieves” and nowadays as “snitches get stitches” which is actively hostile to the idea that the public are the police. ---
**Author:** ![SanVito](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sanvito/32/2805_2.png) [@SanVito](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SanVito)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2024, 11:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/british-law-enforcement-peelian-principles-and-the-underclasses/1011895/6 "2024-12-20T11:48:56Z")
> [@Lumpy](#): > > Which is all well and good for the upper or even middle classes, but how did Peel and his successors deal with the existence of a lower class? As others have pointed out, you seem to have skipped from wealthy classes to the criminal underclass, missing out the VAST majority of the Victorian population who were just decent, working class people. ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2025, 4:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/british-law-enforcement-peelian-principles-and-the-underclasses/1011895/7 "2025-01-22T04:15:47Z")
There was a popular uprising of sorts - the Chartist movement - in the 1800s [https://www.parliament.uk/about/living-heritage/transformingsociety/electionsvoting/chartists/overview/chartistmovement/](https://www.parliament.uk/about/living-heritage/transformingsociety/electionsvoting/chartists/overview/chartistmovement/)). It was quashed twice by what amounted to private law enforcement efforts by the aristocracy, commanding Pinkerton-type mercenaries (or in some cases their own household servants armed with muskets). ---
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2025, 3:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/british-law-enforcement-peelian-principles-and-the-underclasses/1011895/8 "2025-01-22T15:30:53Z")
It’s worth remembering that at that time the populace of Great Britain were literally subjects– of Parliament if not the Crown. Since time immemorial the common people were expected to obey and with next to no self-determination. ---
**Author:** ![Mk\_VII](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/5f9b8f/32.png) [@Mk\_VII](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mk_VII)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2025, 10:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/british-law-enforcement-peelian-principles-and-the-underclasses/1011895/9 "2025-01-23T10:09:35Z")
Chartism was a manifestation of the spirit that produced the Revolutions of 1848 in Europe, but in a much milder form. Today the Chartists demands look unremarkable, save for annual elections, which nobody thought was sensible.