This is a social history of policing. It examines the function and social effects of modern uniformed police in American cities. It explores social history by examining the behavior of a governmental agency and by tracing changes in this behavior over time. It then uses this behavior to construct an analysis of the social role of the police agency. Those concerned with the role of police, with trends in crime, with social welfare services to the indigent, and with the lives of urban children will find new information and topics of interest to them in the following pages. In dealing with these subjects, the book touches upon many problems of importance to social historians, but my hope is that it synthesizes these problems and thereby creates new sets of problems.

For the nonhistorian, this book explains the development of a now-ubiquitous urban institution, and in so doing has policy implications. Perhaps the most important policy implication is that, although we have in the police a municipal agency capable of both social service and disservice, the best and most positive role that they can play is not clear. In the nineteenth century, the police took care of the homeless and even had soup kitchens, but we cannot easily return to that century's welfare-oriented policing. If we did, this study shows that we would have to be prepared to accept the consequences of even greater class and racial bias than we now have.