Term Paper on "Role of Law Enforcement Administrators in the Face of Increased International Terrorism"

Term Paper 15 pages (6496 words) Sources: 1+

[EXCERPT] . . . .

Role of Law Enforcement Administrators in the face of increased International Terrorism

The origins of the office of the sheriff, both in England as well as in the United States of America are very old, and in England, it can be traced back to the time of the Norman Conquest in the year 1066. This was the time when, for the purpose of bettering their community security, the neighbors were grouped in what was known as 'tithing', and their role was to help their neighbors in times of need. These were groups of ten members, and when tithes were arranged in larger groups, of ten members each, and then they were known as shires, making up to one hundred members. These shires were to come under the supervision of the Shire Reeve, who would have been appointed by the King, and they were actually quite similar to the counties of today. The so called 'Shire-Reeve' was what evolved into the Sheriff of today, and in the year 1085, when William the Conqueror was King, he appointed the Sheriff as the official 'tax collector'.

This caused great turmoil and uproar among the subjects, but to no avail; the Sheriff would be the Tax Collector. It was in the year 1100 that the then ruler King Henry I happened to establish the very first Penal Code, and thenceforth, crimes came to be classified as felonies or misdemeanors. The Sheriff's authority and his influences were increased at around the same time, and soon he became a person who would be responsible for carrying out various punishments. In later years, when the English Colonists happened to settle down in America, they formed shires, which would be administered by the English Commander of the Garrison, and his Provost Marshall. Later on, during the 1630's, a few Sheriffs happened to take over some of the duties of the Provosts, and it was in the year 1634 that the state of Virginia appointed its very first Sheriff, William Stone, of Accomack County. The various duties that the American Sheriffs were expected to perform were policing; supervising elections, maintaining jails, and so on. In the year 1776, it was the Sheriff Nixon who proclaimed the 'Declaration of Independence'.

It is indeed a fact that from the time of its origin and its inception, the history of American police, form when it started in England, has undergone numerous changes, and social, political and economic forces have brought about these changes.

The year 1939, as everyone knows, was a time of civilization's lowest ebbs, and when a Swiss sociologist Norbert Elias, happened to publish a book named 'Uber den Prozess der Zivilisation', or in other words, 'On the Civilizing Process', he came up with a strange and a most unlikely theory, which was that the very gradual introduction of social and courtly manners, like for example, eating with a fork and knife, using a handkerchief, and not spitting or urinating on the streets, was what had played a major and a most important role in changing and transforming the existing violent and medieval society of older times, into the more civilized and modern one in existence today.

The book happened to be relegated to obscurity, with the upheavals and turbulence of the 1940's, what with Hitler's invasions and all the atrocities associated with the World War. However, the book was later, during the year 1978, published, with the title 'The History of Manners', and this was when it was noticed by a great number of people. The author subsequently became the real 'guru' of the 'history of crime', something that had never before been analyzed. When historians, therefore, started to analyze ancient archives and texts, they found to their amazement, that crime, especially murder, was in fact at a much higher rate during the Middle Ages, than in the modern times. The crime rate, in fact, is believed to have dropped significantly during the seventeenth, eighteenth, and the nineteenth centuries. This was a strange phenomenon indeed, because according to social theory, the crime rates were supposed to increase with the breaking up of social and community bonds in society, and at the time when there was an increase in urbanization and industrialization.

Various historians have offered various different reasons for the unexpected decrease in the crime rate during the comparatively modern times, and there were some who assumed that perhaps it was industrialization and urbanization and modernization that contributed to this phenomenon. There were some other scholars and researchers who theorized that in actuality crime had not diminished, but had in fact shifted form bodily assaults that were popular in those times, to crimes that were more or less closely related to property, which also indicated that the nature of crime had shifted from an innate scarcity and paucity, to a greater prosperity as well as a free availability of material goods and possessions during modern times. There is also another form of opinion, which states that the decrease in crime seemed to have happened irrespective of industrialization and urbanization.

Perhaps the reason was that there had been an internal psychological shift in people's attitudes towards crime, and this was what had caused the decrease in crime in modern times, as compared to medieval times. While during the Middle Ages, physical violence of all kinds, even to the point of death, was a method with which to defend one's honor, and also to resolve various disputes of any kind, the perpetrator was never ever known as a criminal or as a social outcast because of the 'crime' that he had committed; in fact, he was accepted, even though he was a murderer, with a certain amount of leniency. According to Barbara A. Hanawalt, a historian at Ohio State University, only about 12% of murders ended in a conviction at that time, and the rate of larceny was about 23%, while stealth, burglary, counterfeiting, and other similar crimes were about 100% prevalent. These trends, however, happened to shift after the middle Ages, and the community tolerance changed as well.

The state gained in prominence, while the local community lost its importance. While in the fourteenth century, people appeared to be infinitely more concerned with their reputations, whether they were people of good repute or otherwise, and the entire community was invited to judge the individual, during the fifteenth century, there was a shift from the community reputation of the fourteenth century, to the questions of somebody's 'governance', and a sort of an internal control. With the advent of the sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries, and the expansions of the 'state' in numerous parts of Europe, any sort of unruly and undisciplined and violent behaviors on the parts of the common citizens was taken to be a direct affront and an insult to the Prince or to the ruling King of the time. All this resulted in an increase in the amount of self-control on the peoples' parts, and this in turn led to more civilized behavior.

In England, during the late nineteenth century, the innately restrictive framework of the various separate forms of action in civil cases was in fact replaced by the newer and more modern uniform 'writ of summons', and this meant that more liberal amendments of pleading would be permitted from then onwards.

According to a statement made by Morton H. Halperin and Kate Martin before the House Judiciary Committee, on 24 September 2001, a mere few days after the devastating terrorist attack on the World Trade Center on September 11th that had left more than thousands of innocent American citizens injured or dead, the two appeared to present their case on behalf of the Center for National Security Studies, a true fighter and protector of civil liberties and civil rights, which also makes sure that civil liberties of the private citizens are never compromised on the basis of national security.

The two stated that the Center also believes that the national security must, and of course be protected without in any way undermining the fundamental rights of all the individuals that had been guaranteed under the Bill of Rights. They said that it was not too soon to begin to think about he various ways and means with which to improve the ability to prevent such attacks form happening again at any time in the near and distant future. However, what one must remember is that one must make the important decision that one must act in such a way that not only the personal liberty of an individual, but also the security must be protected to the best levels possible. In fact, this is an important lesson from the past, the pair stated, when all one's concerns for safety and security were eroded and destroyed, and people mutely and uncomplainingly accepted this as being completely normal, as seen, for example, in the 'Alien and Sedition Acts', the internment of Japanese-Americans, and the various efforts that were made by Intelligence agencies in America as well… READ MORE

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