perfidy

A long time ago, I studied the monetary and cultural cost of certain aspects of the Imperial-era British penal system. I learned alot about how graft, social forces, governmental pressure, and random circumstance can shape not only the process of the justice system, but its punishment as well. And it didn't stop there. Oh, no. European legal thought and tradition are fundamental in many ways to our own, even as late as the development of our penitentiary system. And while I answered the questions I set out to adequately, I would have liked to take the work deeper. Perhaps, in the best tradition of scholars past, I ended my work feeling like I had posed still more questions, and opened doors on lines of inquiry I could pursue to make a lasting contribution to my wallet. Daah, my field. Lasting contribution to my field.

One topic that I wish I had thought of then but is on my mind lately is: what did cops do before there were drivers to ticket?

Seriously.

Because, over time, the police have become a guaranteed revenue stream into their city and state. An awful lot of them appear to be running radar; in certain regions of my domain, ensuring the safety of the larger commonweal one ticket at a time is the apparent raison detre of the State Police. Yes, they have other missions- they are the 911 for remote areas of the state; they have a kick-ass crime lab; they have really cool dogs- but really, they're primary mission seems to be to write tickets. I don't know the percentages of how many officers are out pulling people over, as opposed to the total number of officers on duty, but by casual observation it seems somewhere in the neighborhood of all of them.

So as a historically-minded cat, I have to ask myself how long that's been going on. Does the growth of the police force mirror the growth of the population, or more closely the growth of car ownership (if indeed the two are even distinguishable)? What was the pre-automobile analogue of police-generated revenue? Was pre-industrial society safer, since more police ought to have been available to fight crime? When did we decide it was ok for agents of the state to generate income for the government?

And no, I didn't recently get a ticket- I actually drive like an old lady. Well, an old lady who knows where she's going and how to drive. But in my daily travels I see folks bagged by the state cops hand over fist, and just have to ask whether that's really the best use of their time for the mission of maintaining peace and order for the citizenry, or the best use of their time for a rapacious state government?