The iron hand in the velvet glove

About this book

Examines the police force which had emerged during the transition from the turbulence of the frontier years to the relative tranquillity of the later nineteenth century. A centralised, essentially unarmed New Zealand Police Force normally proffered a velvet glove to a society in which both pakeha and Maori generally behaved peacefully ... [requiring] nothing stronger than - in international policing terms - a benign force. But policing ... remained an occupation fraught with danger, difficulty and excitement. This was particularly the case in periods of 'emergency': the 1890 and 1912-13 'industrial troubles', for example ... The glove concelaed an iron hand that could be used without hesitation when necessary. This volume examines the development of modern organisational, forensic and detection (e.g. fingerprint identification) techniques, and the dilemmas of policing ina period of ever-increasing state encroachment upon citizens' thoughts and deeds (e.g. the problems of liquor law enforcement and the special social control measures of the First World War). In the period covered, policing came under intense official and public scrutiny. Police 'scandals' led to commissions of enquiry in which police and public grievances were aired in great detail. Out of these arose a reformed Force whose basic methods and organisation lasted for decades.