Conflict, Compromise and Administrative Convenience: The Police Organization in Nineteenth-Century Toronto.

Abstract

AbstractRecent historical scholarship has stressed the importance of dominant political and economic interest groups in shaping the organization and role of nineteenth-century police institutions. While acknowledging the necessity of developing macro-structural interpretations of police development, this paper argues that a comprehensive understanding of policing requires greater attention to organizational concerns with legitimation, self-maintenance and self-determination as intervening variables in the evolution of urban police forces. Using data on policing in nineteenth-century Toronto, emphasis is placed on delineating the process by which police administrators sought to achieve insulation from external sources of control and to act as independent agents of change and innovation in the structure and functions of policing.