This assignment intends to examine the current structure of the Police Service operating in England and Wales, paying particular attention to the various roles of a modern Police Force within the wider criminal Justice System.
             Firstly, the assignment will look at how the Police Force has evolved and where the origins of the Service lie, and look also at how the roles and function of the Police Service have altered over the past three decades, finally summarising the positive and negative aspects of the current structure and role in comparison to the service provided at the beginning of the nineteenth century.
             The first Metropolitan Police Force was formed at the beginning of the nineteenth century, under the Conservative Government serving at the time. Sir Robert Peel, the then Home Secretary oversaw the imposition of the Metropolitan Force. There has been vast historical comment suggesting various different schools of thought as to why the Metropolitan Force was established at the time it was, and one such Whig Historian, Reith, argued that the idea of a Metropolitan Police Force was borne in order to control the "increase of [the] menace of crime" ( Reith, in Controlling Crime. 2002. pp 13). Reith discusses the formation of this Metropolitan Force as a solution to crime and disorder that he considered to be a growing problem during the 1820's. Reith argued that the Government initiative to create a Metropolitan Police Force in the country's capital was a means of controlling the "army of homeless children...who lived by stealing and begging", and as way of stopping the "constant menace of mob disorder", which Reith saw as a threat to the "dignity of Parliament" ( Reith, in Controlling Crime. 2002. pp 13).
             As an alternative explanation as to why the Metropolitan Police Force was formed, fellow Whig Historian, Storch comments on the idea of a Police Force as a greater tool ...