Filing in the Force
| Date | 01 January 1950 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0032258X5002300113 |
| Published date | 01 January 1950 |
| Author | William Wood |
| Subject Matter | Article |
FILING
IN
THE
FORCE
69
possibly unconditional effect of section
12
of this Act appears to be
that aprobation order or an order of discharge, absolute or conditional,
under section 7 will no longer avoid the necessity for showing , special
reasons'
against disqualification.
Filing
in
the
Force
By
CONSTABLE
WILLIAM
WOOD
Kent
County
Constabulary
IT has been said
that
an efficient filing system is the key to an efficient
Force. So this should be, for the modernPolice Force to-day demands
speed, and only an efficient filing system can speedily give the answers.
Filing in the Force has developed as the Force has progressed,
but
whereas the histories of the various Police Forces cover most
aspects of the policeman's life and duty, the filing systems are
not
mentioned.
It
may be
that
they were the skeletons of the Force and
in fact they still are to this day in some Forces. We must imagine,
therefore,
that
in the early days of
1829
the
first Home Office Circular
was issued, marked No.
I.
After being read by the few to the many,
this was filed by placing it on a new spike. You may say,
"That
is
quite a good system, especially for those days." You are quite
right-
had it remained at one spike for all Home Office letters. We are too
early for that, for to the letter were added all other letters, reports
and notices of wanted felons, until the only sequence was the daily
order in which they were received.
In
the
beginning this would work quite well, as
the
amount of
reports per year and letters combined would perhaps equal one morn-
ing's post-bag to-day.
The
paper-mills, as we know them to-day,
would not start for another hundred years. Reports were few and very
far between.
If
a man was brought. into the station on some charge,
it was entered in a book as big as a counter. Details of the case were
completed mostly on one long line across
the
book opened out.
This
was efficient recording if the indexing was completed correctly. No
other filing was necessary.
As time went on so paper increased; people became more educated
and the criminal did not lag behind. Letter-presses came into use.
Copies of letters were kept in one book by the simple process of a book of
flimsy paper being used for the copies of letters written in copying ink.
The
presses were elaborate machines,
but
they served the purpose
until carbon paper came on the market.
The
filing method used in
connection with the press book was to stick papers of the same subject
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