ABSTRACT
When the New Police were introduced in the early nineteenth century, the political climate at the time favoured a crime prevention model of policing based on patrol. The creation of a criminal investigation capability took another 50 years to emerge, even in embryonic form. It is fair to say that the development of an investigative capability by the police has been underresearched by historians – certainly in comparison with other aspects of policing. What we do know is that, over the next 50 years, there were a number of high-profile cases of corruption and indications that some areas of police investigation might be institutionally corrupt.
