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Sir Robert Peel's Nine Points of policing

These "Nine Points" are to be found all over the internet and are usually described as being the brain-child of Sir Robert Peel. In September 2016, I received an email from a retired police officer, asking if I had an original source for ascribing these Nine Points to Peel. He had searched, to no avail. The results of his -- and my further -- research has led us both to the conclusion that Peel probably did not come up with Nine Points (or even Twelve Points) and that the list was either produced by Rowan and/or Mayne, or alternatively is the result of some historian's commentary.

I am told that at the Metropolitan Police Training School at Hendon and the source of reference to all constables was the Instruction Book. The first passage in that book which they had to learn and recite word-perfect was the “Primary Objects”.This was written in 1829 by Richard Mayne one of the first two Justices of the Peace (later in 1839 referred to as Commissioners) appointed in charge of the Metropolitan Police Force and published in Police Orders. The Primary Objects: are as follows:

“The primary object of an efficient police is the prevention of crime: the next that of detection and punishment of offenders if crime is committed. To these ends all the efforts of police must be directed. The protection of life and property, the preservation of public tranquillity, and the absence of crime, will alone prove whether those efforts have been successful and whether the objects for which the police were appointed have been attained.”   

For what they are worth, these are the given Nine Points.



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Last modified 10 October, 2016

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