Bentham on Preventive Police: The Calendar of Delinquency in Evaluation of Policy and the Police Gazette in Manipulation of Opinion

Abstract

In 1798–1799, Bentham lent his services to Patrick Colquhoun in drafting Bills to regularize the new Thames Police Office and establish a Central Board of Police. While recognizing Colquhoun as the “author of the system,” Bentham brought his own utilitarian philosophy to bear on the task, and his arguments shed light on the twin role of licensing in both providing the finance necessary for an expansion of police and in generating a flow of information for use in deterring, detecting, and apprehending criminals. The Police Gazette and the Calendar of Delinquency were to be official publications of the proposed Board of Police, which combined the promulgation of information (thus increasing public knowledge through the understanding) with the effort to mould public opinion (thus influencing the will). Dissemination of facts provided grist to the existing moral sanction’s mill and facilitated cooperation between the people and the agents of penal law. In reaction to anxiety about contagion from revolutionary France, Bentham also explicitly seeks to guide and direct public opinion, thus connecting his police writings directly with the esoteric elements of indirect legislation.