Institute of Advanced Studies

Dark, Dirty and Dangerous? Police and the Environment in Scotland 1800-1850

by Dr David Barrie, UWA

This lecture examines the relationship between Scottish police development and perceptions and realities of the built, natural and social environment in the first half of the nineteenth century.

 It explores how the environment, and how it was conceived, both shaped – and was shaped by – the new police model that was introduced throughout the country. Although the intellectual origins and justification for reform were often rooted in Scottish Enlightenment notions of civic improvement, the lecture argues that police commissioners often had a narrow social conception of what constituted the common good, which had significant implications for the health and safety of the physical environment, the control and regulation of people and public space, and the conceptualisation and prosecution of environmental and criminal offences.