ABSTRACT
After reading this chapter students should understand and be able to discuss:
How the changing population demographics contributed to increasing social tensions in urban America and what this meant for the criminal justice system
How American justice diverged from its British traditions after American independence
The birth of federal law enforcement
The influence of British and French police traditions on American policing
How the Alien and Sedition Acts provided an early test for the Bill of Rights and why national security was such an important concern in the new nation
The evolution of the Auburn and Pennsylvania systems and their contributions to the development of modern corrections
Why America became more violent as its population became more diverse as it moved away from its colonial roots
How slave revolts influenced the development of southern police strategies and traditions
In the four decades following the American Revolution, experimental steps were taken toward organizing American criminal justice procedures and institutions. Post-revolutionary American criminal justice made the transition to the nineteenth century with groundwork for an organized correctional system. Meanwhile, the state of law enforcement lagged far behind, still firmly rooted in the community-oriented volunteer policing of the previous centuries. But developments in Great Britain and France would soon find voice in the 130emergence of organized twenty-four-hour police forces in several major American cities in the first half of the new century.