In the early nineteenth century a campaign began to restrict the scope of the noose. Members of parliament, such as Sir Samuel Romilly and Sir James Mackintosh, led the way. In 1819 a House of Commons Select Committee on Criminal Law chaired by the latter, advocated means of increasing the efficiency of the criminal laws by abating their undue rigour. It proposed the repeal or amendment of obsolete statutes, the revision of the forgery laws, and the abolition of capital punishment for larceny in shops, houses and ships, and for stealing horses, cattle and sheep. Instead, the alternatives of transportation and imprisonment should be made more effectual.

Without an agency capable of preventing and detecting crime, however, a mitigation in the deterrent effect of exemplary punishments was unlikely. But a police force was anathema to many of the Whig legal reformers, who feared that it could become an instrument of executive tyranny. It would be akin to a standing army. The last time England was subjected to such was under the ill-omened James II. He paid for this affront to liberty with his throne. In London, policing, such as it then was, was confused and inefficient, relying on constables, beadles, churchwardens, unpaid constables, and nightwatchmen equipped with lanterns and rattles. The Bow Street Runners patrolled the main highways. There was a Thames Police and fifty City police. All were rivals.

In 1822 Robert Peel entered the Cabinet as Home Secretary. The criminal justice system was a muddle, with a plethora of acts, some antique, some overlapping, all confusing.