Dmytro Yagunov: The Origins of the Modern Police in the Views of Michel Foucault

The list of disciplinary institutions [created in the early 19th century] is not exhaustive, and we would like to highlight an aspect that is of fundamental importance for the purposes of this study. This concerns the emergence of the police in European countries, and we emphasise the emergence of the modern police with their traditional functions of crime investigation and maintenance of public order.

At first glance, the history of the formation of modern police services in European countries seems rather strange only because such services appeared late compared to other attributes of the state.

For example, the French Sûreté appeared only in 1811.

The English Scotland Yard appeared later, in 1829, and only in the form of plainclothes police officers who paraded through London in blue frock coats, grey trousers and black top hats to the newly established police stations[1]. The cylinders were intended to demonstrate that it was not soldiers who had taken upon themselves the protection and security of society, but civilians, given the English people’s deeply rooted and, from today’s perspective, rather specific ideas about civil liberties, which saw police surveillance as a threat to civil liberties, not to mention the French model of armed gendarmes[2]. It is no coincidence that Herbert Spencer emphasised that ‘we [the English] are distinguished by our zealous attachment to liberty and the firmness with which we defend our rights’[3]. Therefore, it was only in 1842 that the first detectives (in the modern sense) appeared in England, who were forced to take off their blue tailcoats and put on other, more inconspicuous civilian clothes[4].

Incidentally, ‘blue uniforms’ is not just a colour. For English society at that time, it was a symbol of the struggle against tyranny for freedom, the essence of which was aptly formulated by Spencer: ‘In principle, there is no difference between the blow of a policeman’s baton and the blow of a soldier’s bayonet. They are both forms of violation of equal freedom. … Policemen are soldiers acting alone; soldiers are policemen acting together’[5]. This opinion of Spencer more than accurately reflects the views of the English at that time regarding the French attitude to freedom, who ‘live under the regulation of a whole legion of prefects, sub-prefects, inspectors, controllers, intendants, commissioners and other government officials’[6].

It was for these reasons that Foucault pointed to the danger of greater dissemination and imposition of discipline in society through the large-scale installation of a state police force in the political sphere, for which the whole of society becomes a field of investigation and an object of discipline and punishment.

In the United States, the modern police force only appeared between 1836 and 1855. The concept of probation began to be gradually introduced in the 1840s. The institution of parole was introduced into the Western criminal justice system only between 1840 and 1870.

The table below shows the emergence of civil police in various cities, localities and countries (excluding gendarmerie and paramilitary police units for controlling areas affected by riots, disturbances and uprisings)[7]:

The initial surprise as to why modern police services emerged in European countries 30-50 years after modern prisons appeared in the same countries can be explained rationally.

The idealistic, formal-classical approach does not provide an answer to this question, analysing the issue in terms of ‘crime and law enforcement’ and limiting itself to explanations such as ‘increased crime rates’.

In contrast to the above approach, the radical (positivist or revisionist) approach, which we take as the basis for our research, explains this differently, with the key category being the strengthening of social control over the proletariat and the lumpenproletariat. It is all the more necessary to recall that the creation of modern civil police services in Europe with functions traditional for the present day corresponded to the wave of revolutions of 1848-1849 in France, Italy, Germany and the Austrian Empire.

For Foucault, the police are not something banal like ‘a state agency for fighting crime’, as characterised by classical views. For Foucault, the police are ‘a calculation and a technique that allows for the establishment of a mobile, yet stable and controlled relationship between order in the state and the growth of state power’[8]. The goal of the police is not to search for criminals, which is typical of the classic approach, but to make rational use of the forces of the entire state[9]. The purpose of the police is to control people’s actions to the extent that such activities may constitute a special element in the development of state power[10].

In a broad sense, the police are a market institution[11]. Foucault then provides, in our opinion, the most profound explanation for the emergence of the police institution – the police as a disciplinary market apparatus unknown in Antiquity and the Middle Ages. In order for the population of a state to be the foundation of its wealth and power, it must be controlled by a special disciplinary apparatus that counteracts emigration, promotes the influx of useful productive migrants into the country, and creates conditions for increasing the birth rate[12]. This refers to an apparatus that cares for the population as the source and prerequisite of state wealth and ensures that the population works as it should, where it should, and produces what it should, while remaining under the invisible panoptic umbrella of written dossiers on each individual.

What the police thus encompass is a vast area that can be said to extend from life to something greater than life[13]. The police must systematically and covertly ensure that people live in such a way that they do not pose a threat to the elites, especially due to a lack of food, water and other basic necessities. In this new system, governed no longer by the simple imperative of ‘live, not die’, but rather ‘live and act not much better than simply live’. The police must ensure the effective usefulness of mere existence, a barely better life, coexistence for the accumulation and increase of state power. In essence, it was about creating something like a large city out of the kingdom, out of its entire territory, and making sure that the territory was governed like a city, as perfectly as a city[14].

Foucault reveals the imposition of police discipline on society as follows:

‘In the second half of the 18th century, written form was used very little in police practice: offences that did not fall within the jurisdiction of the courts were dealt with by a police lieutenant or his deputies, who issued a decision, which was then simply recorded. Then, throughout the 18th century, the burden of written form on individuals gradually increased. The practice of control visits emerged: inspectors visited various places of detention to find out why a person had been arrested, when it happened, how they had behaved since their arrest, whether their behaviour had improved, and so on. The system was improved, and in the second half of the century, files began to be compiled, including on those who had come into contact with the police in one way or another or were suspected of something. From around the 1760s, police officials were required to compile reports on suspects in duplicate. One copy remained at the police station, allowing the person to be monitored where they lived, while the other was sent to Paris, where it was registered at the ministry and distributed to other large regions. These reports had to be updated – while the second copy was sent to Paris, where it was registered by the ministry and distributed to other large regions, to the local police lieutenants, so that if the person moved, their whereabouts could be quickly established. Thus, based on techniques that I will call permanent written records, police biographies or, more precisely, individual personalities are created. And in 1826, when the police introduced the use of card indexes, previously used in libraries and botanical gardens, the formation of this administrative and centralised individuality can be considered complete’[15].

Continuous and constant visibility, ensured by written form, has another important consequence: this visibility, which has truly become part of the disciplinary system, allows disciplinary authorities to respond with extraordinary speed. Unlike power-domination, which only comes into play by force, from time to time, through war, public executions, ceremonies, disciplinary power can influence the individual continuously from the very beginning, from his first gesture, from his first manifestations. It has an inherent tendency to intervene at the very moment of action, when the virtual becomes real; disciplinary power always seeks to prevent, to intervene if possible before anything happens, through a game of surveillance, incentives, punishments and pre-judicial sanctions[16].

In addition, special attention is beginning to be paid to statistics: ‘Police and statistics complement each other, and statistics are a common tool for both the police and European balance. Statistics are the state’s knowledge about the state, understood as the state’s knowledge about itself, but also knowledge about other states’[17].

As a result of the imposition of police discipline in Western society in the 18th and 19th centuries, the police and professional criminals organised a special form of political relations with the authorities, where the new ‘criminal world’ of the new panoptic society, as Foucault aptly defined it, was a discipline for those who did not submit to police discipline[18].

[1] Torvald, Yu. (1991). The Age of Criminalistics. Moscow: Progress.

[2] McLaughlin, E., Muncie, J. (2002). Controlling Crime. London: SAGE Publications. 362 p. P.17.

[3] Spencer, G. (2013). Social Statics. Kyiv: Gama-Print. 496 p. p. 88.

[4] Torvald, Yu. (1991). The Age of Criminalistics. Moscow: Progress.

[5] Spencer, G. (2013). Social Statics. Kyiv: Gama-Print. 496 p. p. 268.

[6] Spencer, G. (2013). Social Statics. Kyiv: Gama-Print. 496 p. p. 289.

[7] McLaughlin, E., Muncie J. (2002). Controlling Crime. London: SAGE Publications. 362 p. P.48.

[8] Foucault, M. (2011). Security, Territory, Population. Lectures given at the Collège de France in 1977-1978. St. Petersburg. 544 p. P. 407.

[9] Foucault, M. (2011). Security, Territory, Population. Lectures given at the Collège de France in 1977-1978. St. Petersburg. 544 p. P. 407.

[10] Foucault, M. (2011). Security, Territory, Population. Lectures given at the Collège de France in 1977-1978. St. Petersburg. 544 p. P. 418.

[11] Foucault, M. (2011). Security, Territory, Population. Lectures given at the Collège de France in 1977-1978. St. Petersburg. 544 p. P. 434.

[12] Foucault, M. (2011). Security, Territory, Population. Lectures given at the Collège de France in 1977-1978. St. Petersburg. 544 p. P. 105.

[13] Foucault, M. (2011). Security, Territory, Population. Lectures given at the Collège de France in 1977-1978. St. Petersburg. 544 p. P. 423.

[14] Foucault, M. (2011). Security, Territory, Population. Lectures given at the Collège de France in 1977-1978. St. Petersburg. 544 p. P. 435.

[15] Foucault, M. (2007). Psychiatric Power. Lectures given at the Collège de France in 1973-1974. St. Petersburg. 450 p. P.68.

[16] Foucault, M. (2007). Psychiatric Power. Lectures given at the Collège de France in 1973-1974. St. Petersburg. 450 p. P.69.

[17] Foucault, M. (2011). Security, Territory, Population. Lectures given at the Collège de France in 1977-1978. St. Petersburg. 544 p. P.410.

[18] Foucault, M. (2007). Psychiatric Power. Lectures given at the Collège de France in 1973-1974. St. Petersburg. 450 p. P.73.

Source – Yagunov, D. (2025). Prison policy as a component of social control: between penological pessimism and the rehabilitation paradigm. Tübingen – Odessa.