ABSTRACT
This chapter examines patterns of policing in the countries where the cities of interest. It explains public attitudes towards the police because they provide a useful frame of reference for understanding suspect responses to police detention. An important part of the history of the police in the four countries of interest is that Australia, Ireland and the US are all former British colonies, admittedly of different sizes and with differing histories and trajectories, in terms of their relationships with their former colonial rulers. In England, the term police came to have a different and more specific meaning than that ascribed to it in France, where it originated from, and where it was understood to mean “order and the power to establish it”. The foregoing discussion illuminates the historic tensions between centralisation and localisation in England, Ireland, America and Australia, the legacy of which has infused the contemporary organisation of police work.
