Police, body of officers representing the civil authority of government. Police typically are responsible for maintaining public order and safety, enforcing the law, and preventing, detecting, and investigating criminal activities. These functions are known as policing. Police are often also entrusted with various licensing and regulatory activities.
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However, police scholars have criticized this popular understanding of the word police—that it refers to members of a public organization having the legal competence to maintain order and enforce the law—for two reasons. First, it defines police by their ends rather than by the specific means that they use to achieve their goals. Second, the variety of situations in which police are asked to intervene is much greater than law enforcement and order maintenance. There is now a consensus among researchers, based on a definition first proposed by American sociologist Egon Bittner, that the common feature among all the different agencies engaged in policing is the legal competence to enforce coercive, nonnegotiable measures to resolve problematic situations. Such situations are characterized by two features: their potential for harm and the need to solve them urgently before they develop that potential. Hence, the actual use of coercion or the threat of using it allows police to put a quick, nonnegotiated, and conclusive end to problematic situations (e.g., keeping people away from the scene of a fire for their own protection and to allow firemen to do their job).
Following that definition, policing thus may be performed by several different professional organizations: public police forces, private security agencies, the military, and government agencies with various surveillance and investigative powers.

Police And Society
There is a remarkable historical, geographic, and organizational diversity in the activities of people who are, or have been, defined as police. Police work has developed considerably from what it was centuries ago. As populations grew and informal institutions of socialization and social control—such as the family, schools, and the church—decreased in effectiveness, police became increasingly necessary. However, no uniform worldwide system of policing ever emerged.

Numerous factors help to explain the diversity of police activities and systems. The types of crime typically committed in a society and the methods used by criminals play a great part in determining a police force’s activities. For instance, if criminals use firearms, the police are likely to be armed, or if criminals use computers to commit crimes, the police may establish a special unit dedicated to investigating cybercrimes. History also helps to explain this diversity; e.g., former colonies tend to keep the policing system established by their colonizers. Population plays an important role as well; policing rural areas and villages vastly differs from policing large cities. Foremost among the factors that determine a country’s system of policing, however, are the political culture of the society—e.g., whether it is open and democratic or closed and totalitarian—and the state’s conception of police accountability.

Policing small communities
Most people willingly obey most laws, whether a police officer is present or not. They comply with the laws because they consider them fair and because they believe that in the long run it is in their interest to observe them. In small communities in which most citizens know each other, people who live up to the community’s shared ideals are rewarded with the esteem of their fellow citizens. If they break the law or fall short of other people’s expectations, their lives often become more difficult because they are shamed, shunned, or ostracized by the rest of the community and are less likely to receive assistance in times of trouble. In all societies this system of informal rewards and punishments is the most potent aid to law enforcement, but it is strongest in small communities. The forces that order life in a small community thus make the task of the police much easier. Police action is needed only when such informal controls have proved insufficient.
This is why rural and sparsely populated areas are often policed by a single centralized—and often militarized—police force, even in countries that have a decentralized police system. A single police organization operating under a unified command is more cost-effective and more operationally efficient than a bevy of independent small-town police forces. Since the territory to cover may be very large and characterized by difficult terrain, police in such regions must have the long-range mobility and adaptability that are characteristic of military forces. In addition, the countryside has historically been policed by military organizations, as police forces were initially created in urban settings. (The great exceptions to this model are the United Kingdom and the United States, which have long resisted police centralization.)

Policing large societies
In larger and more complex societies, informal institutions of social control are generally weaker, and, as a result, formal institutions are generally stronger. The relative weakness of informal controls is attributable to a number of factors. In large societies people often deal with strangers whom they will never meet again, and in such circumstances there may be fewer informal rewards for honesty or fewer informal penalties for dishonesty. Such communities tend also to be more technologically advanced, which leads to the adoption of new laws, such as those regulating the licensing and operation of automobiles and those concerned with commerce conducted on the Internet (see e-commerce). Because some of these new laws may not have the same moral significance as older laws criminalizing violence, theft, or fraud, people may feel less of an obligation to obey them. Moreover, when new laws are created, crime increases almost necessarily. There is thus a danger that people who are convicted of having violated a new law may feel aggrieved and in the future be less willing to cooperate with the police or to obey the law when they are not being observed. Finally, as societies grow, it becomes more difficult for people to place the public interest ahead of their private interests in circumstances where the two may conflict. An employer who catches an employee committing an offense within the workplace, for example, may choose not to notify the police because he fears that the firm’s production, profit, or prestige would suffer if the offense was publicly exposed.