Quarterly Notes
| DOI | 10.1177/0032258X3200500411 |
| Published date | 01 October 1932 |
| Date | 01 October 1932 |
| Subject Matter | Quarterly Notes |
QUARTERLY
NOTES
THE POLICE AS AN INSTRUMENT OF GOVERNMENT
To
a lawyer the functions of the police in relation to the central government
are an interesting study. Every country naturally frames its police system
to suit its own conditions and requirements, and the result is that among
the police forces throughout the world there is a great difference in the prin-
ciples upon which the organisation and status of the police forces are based.
But there is one characteristic common to all organised police forces: they
are the instrument through which the preservation of order in the state is
maintained by the central government.
It
follows that whether or not the
actual responsibility for raising, equipping and maintaining a body of police
devolves upon a local authority, as in the United Kingdom and most of the
United States of America, or whether it is a service undertaken by the central
government, as in most European states, the function of the police in the
aggregate is a function of the state and not of any particular locality or local
authority.
As shown by interesting articles which have appeared from time to
time in the Police Journal, the tendency in certain European continental
states is to merge municipal and provincial police forces into one state service
or, at any rate, to place themunder the more or less direct control of ministers
of state.
In
Hungary, for example, such merger took place in 1919 and the
Royal Hungarian State Police became an armed as well as a uniformed corps
under direct state control (see article by
Dr.
Heinrich Dorning, Police
Journal, Vol.
II,
p. 62).
In
Germany, as in America, the policing of town
and country has always been a matter for the individual states of the con-
federation; and in the Prussian state there are four chief branches of
police-
central police, country police, district police, and local police; each branch
having a distinct authority as its head, the central police authority for the
Prussian police being the Minister of the Interior (see article by Major
Paul Riege, Police Journal, Vol.
II,
p. 225).
To
take another example, the
post-war Latvian state organised and maintained its police force throughout
the country under the direct control of the Ministry of the Interior, the
whole territory of Latvia, apart from the cities, being divided into 520 rural
communities, the police in each community being under the immediate
authority of a state police sergeant (see article on '
The
Youngest European
Police Force,' Police Journal, Vol. IV, p. 232).
The
above instances have been chosen more or less at random in order
to illustrate the diversity of principle and practice adopted by countries
young and old for securing that order is maintained in its territory.
In
considering the legal position of police both from a national and international
point of view, there are two points of special
interest:
(I)
What is the true
constitutional relationship of the police to the central government, and (2)
what are the international consequences of action taken by the police? As
regards the first point, it is obvious to a lawyer that whatever may be the
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