Abstract

Chapter 3 explores the question of why third-party policing emerged in the thirteenth-century communes. It suggests that the familia's patrols responded to three perceived needs of communal regimes: to bring more criminals into official custody, to proactively uncover crime and prevent future crime, and to make law enforcement more impersonal. In the latter two respects, the emergence of third-party policing should be viewed as a logical extension of inquisitorial procedure and the podestarial model of government. The chapter concludes by discussing how more coercive and impersonal law enforcement could offer advantages in the context of intraelite competition, and how larger societal trends—namely urbanization and the revolutions in written recordkeeping and legal science—enabled this institutional shift.

Keywords: contumacy, preventive policing, community-based institutions, enmity, republicanism, class conflict

Likewise we establish and ordain, for the advantage and good state of the commune of Bologna, and for this purpose, that criminals might be captured and led into the custody of the commune of Bologna, that the coming podestà within 15 days of the start of his rule should summon 20 good, lawful, and trustworthy foreign men, who ought to keep watch through the city and boroughs day and night, and search for men bearing prohibited arms, and pursue and capture outlawed criminals of the commune of Bologna, and do everything else according to the direction of the podestà and council of Bologna.