States in Order: The Historical Origins of Policing and Prisons

The apprehension and punishment of those who committed crimes against the state was a ramshackle and varied affair in the early modern era. Citizens often had collective responsibility for criminal acts in their village; punishment for crimes was often bloodthirsty and erratically applied, and public order was secured at best by nightwatchmen and city guards. Looming over these practices was the authority of the medieval church and local notables producing a bewildering away of criminal codes, punishments, and militias. Yet by the late nineteenth century, the nation-state had often centralized and secularized control over public order, removing it from towns, villages, and the church. This paper explores the conditions under which the state took on these responsbilities, building on our earlier work on public education (Ansell and Lindvall 2013) and health (Ansell and Lindvall 2016). We show that centralization of public order was typically achieved under liberal and socialist government, or alternatively under fascism, and that secularization of public order was accomplished earliest in Catholic states.