Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Figures
- Acknowledgments
- A Note on Usage
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 Police Power in the Italian Communes
- 2 Police Discretion and Personal Autonomy
- 3 The Logic of Third-Party Policing
- 4 External Threats: Policing Out-Groups and Criminality
- 5 Internal Threats: Policing Violence and Enmity
- 6 The Social Impact of Third-Party Policing
- Conclusion
- About the author
- Index
3 - The Logic of Third-Party Policing
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 November 2020
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Figures
- Acknowledgments
- A Note on Usage
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 Police Power in the Italian Communes
- 2 Police Discretion and Personal Autonomy
- 3 The Logic of Third-Party Policing
- 4 External Threats: Policing Out-Groups and Criminality
- 5 Internal Threats: Policing Violence and Enmity
- 6 The Social Impact of Third-Party Policing
- Conclusion
- About the author
- Index
Summary
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
The last two chapters have illustrated the coercive capacity of the podestà’s familia, both in terms of compelling individuals into court and projecting the threat of prosecution for all citizens. The familia made government police power pervasive in daily life and, to an important extent, turned self-governing citizens into subjects of the commune. The birth of third-party policing thus raises a fundamental question: why did citizen-legislators in cities like Bologna impose this kind of law enforcement upon themselves? After all, it is reasonable to assume that political elites would seek to maximize their personal autonomy, not constrain it. Bologna's lawmakers expressly stated their rationale in a 1260 statute, the earliest surviving law from that commune to deal expressly with the podestà's berrovarii:
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.
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- Information
- Police Power in the Italian Communes, 1228–1326 , pp. 133 - 172Publisher: Amsterdam University PressPrint publication year: 2019