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
6 - The Social Impact 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 6 explores how third-party policing impacted the norms that governed communal society. By proactively enforcing the law, police patrols made communal society more of a rules-based order and promoted a culture of legalism that rewarded defendants for their knowledge of written statutes and legal procedure. The credible threat of arrest and punishment created by the familia's patrols also affected the behavioral calculus of locals. At the same, third-party policing did not prevent violent self-help, enmity, and public corruption from undermining the stability and legitimacy of communal regimes. In the end, the chief legacy of the communes’ experiment with more impersonal law enforcement was to normalize government coercion, even as urban governments increasingly served the interests of a narrow elite.
Keywords: mandatory rules, legal literacy, resistance and evasion, bribery, legal privilege
In October 1286, the familia found a knife on a table under the portico of Giovanni Mezzovillani's house in Strada Maggiore. The record does not indicate why, but they charged a certain Giovanni di magister Alberto, perhaps because he was standing nearest. In his defense, this Giovanni argued that the weapon was in fact a tailor's knife and belonged to Giovanni Lambertini da Stifonte, who had placed it there upon returning from outside the city. Two witnesses, who claimed to have been traveling with Giovanni da Stifonte, confirmed the defendant's story. According to one of them, a notary named Mattiolo di Pietro, the other Giovanni had placed the knife on the table upon returning to the city so that he would not run afoul of the familia. However, three days later—and with no indication as to why—the judge launched an inquisition against a tailor named Guido, who lived and perhaps worked in the house Giovanni Mezzovillani, alleging that he had coached the witnesses of the defendant Giovanni to testify falsely and “free him from the statutory penalty” for the knife. The inquest did not suggest Guido's motive, but it is possible that this tailor's knife actually belonged to him, and he was loath to lose it to the commune.
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- Information
- Police Power in the Italian Communes, 1228–1326 , pp. 267 - 312Publisher: Amsterdam University PressPrint publication year: 2019