In the United states, the progressive era was a time of great social change and economic growth. For Americans, the goal was to stop corruption, violence, and social injustices. Reforms were established in order to get rid of some of the inefficiencies with social issues like the police enforcement. Although the police enforcement has changed since then, some of the effects from progressive reform movements have been adopted into society today.
During the progressive era, multiple changes needed to be made in order to shift the way of life and police brutality. There were several reform efforts done in the Progressive Era to change the way of the police force. To start, the civil service was created in Brooklyn, in an effort to get the police out of the hands of the politician. In addition to this, there was professionalization which was defined by several parts. One part was control by experts, which was a reform movement to have expert training to treat a job as a manual profession. This declared that the police could be controlled by someone who was an expert in new fields, such as police science. There was a military model where specialized squads came into play such as bomb squads and even the “Italian Squad” in New York. Furthermore, there were entrance exams and training because the police were more responsive to communities with potential juvenile delinquents during this time period. Their method previously was to take them around the corner and beat them up, but the reformers wanted something less violent (Miller, 11/19). There were several positive impacts of these reform movements such as better quality of recruits, more discipline and the gradual removal from politics. On the other hand, there were also cons to these reforms such as the police being further and further removed from ordinary citizens as well as increased surveillance with very little concern of the rights of people arrested.
The way the police enforcement was run during the Progressive Era; 1890-1917, and the way it is run today has both its similarities and differences. Policewomen were first introduced during the Progressive Era in 1908. Lola Baldwin was the first police woman from Portland, Oregon. Policewomen have become adopted into today’s society due to the fact that there are now women as officers. The dress and actions of women, however, were different for women during that time period. For example, Miss Baldwin did not have to wear a uniform, she was basically a social worker. She had to do the preventative work with kids and women who were either already prostitutes or women who could grow up to be prostitutes. Today, women have quite similar roles to men on the police force. The first woman cop, Alice S. Wells did patrol on the streets of Los Angeles in 1910, as the first woman patrol officer, who was more interested in looking out for kids on the street corner and talking to them. Women police at the time were a part of the motherly concept by saving children into going into crime(Miller 11/19). Although the genetic makeup of men and women from then to now has not change, causing men to still have more force than women, their verbal and persuasive skills along with their creativity allow for them to be a perfect match for the job.
In addition to women, extreme crime control was emphasized during the progressive era, where there was an emphasis on making detection of crimes into a true profession; finding out who committed the crime using scientific methods. The majority of the scientific methods developed then are still used today. The earliest scientific method was mugshots showing a way of improving and strengthening the way police found criminals; however, this was inefficient and ineffective at the time, due to the fact that people would attempt to disguise themselves in ways such as scrunching up their face. Mugshots today typically have one side angle and one front view where you are mandated to not scrunch your face or make facial expressions so that it is easier to detect you. Another use of the scientific method was crime scene photography which is crucial to crime scene investigation today because you never know if someone is tampering with evidence at a crime scene after an initial investigation. Another popular method in the 1880s was the Bertillon Method of physical measurements which helped identify criminals who were already arrested if needed by elaborate and precise measurements of features such as the size/length of the nose or the distance between the eyes and the nose. This is partially used today for suspect sketches with information from witnesses or in a police line-up. Fingerprints were taken when people got arrested beginning in the 1930s and is still largely used today for various different reasons like for passports, citizenship, or even some jobs. More inventions such as crime labs or a polygraph test were also developed to make the police enforcement more scientific and make it easier overall to narrow down a perpetrator back then and today.
Today, stop-and-frisk had gone largely into play. This movement is dependent on the fourth amendment which claims that the police must have a reason to believe a crime has or is taking place before stopping the suspect, and if that falls true, the police may frisk the suspect if they believe that they are armed and dangerous. Although this is necessary in society today, changes must be made to prevent officers from undergoing racial discrimination and illegal behavior when stopping citizens. Unfortunately, this had gotten out of hand in communities of hispanics and blacks as shown by James O’Neill, New York City’s police commissioner, who claimed that “the department had ‘overused and sometimes misused’ its stop-and-frisk program in the past years – particularly in minority neighborhoods (Source 1).” This is similar to the police force during the progressive era because they targeted communities with potential juvenile delinquents, which typically were minority communities. In this same article, it is shown that the “…stop-and-frisk program exploded out of all proportion by 2011, when the police detained people on the streets nearly 700,000 times…and that in nearly 90 percent, the people stopped had done nothing wrong (Source 1)”.
Today, there are many reforms in action to undergo changes for officers to respond better and take better action in stop-and-frisks. Reforms taking place include better selection of police personnel during recruitment, improved training, clearer administrative policies, and external oversight. Better selection of police can occur with a screening in and screening out process which is important because it has been recognized that “Officers who possess empathy, moral acceptance of coercive authority, protection of the vulnerable, and problem-solving, what some have called good craftsmanship, will be less likely to engage in racially biased and otherwise improper behavior during encounters of any kind with citizens (Source 2)”. Training can also be done to get into the police academy, and then through field and in-service training to prove officers with the skills they will need before-hand, during, and afterwards. Administrative rules and procedures give an exact prompt of what of what is and is not acceptable as an officer in order for them to think about if what they are doing is actually necessary for stop-and-frisk action. This differs from previous times, like in the progressive era, where the police did not have rules and regulations that they were mandated to follow at risk of losing their job.. Lastly, there is external oversight which shows that there is one person with knowledge that has authority over a smaller portion. This is slightly similar to the police force during the progressive era because there was control by parts.