ABSTRACT

While the ideals of the police regulation of urban order in nineteenth-century Britain have received significant scholarly attention, there has been limited engagement with how this type of policing operated in practice. By examining for the first time the evolution and genealogy of ‘lurking’ and ‘loitering’, two legal terms that formed a prominent part of the police language of suspicion from the later eighteenth century, this article emphasises the critical role of this legal language in the exercise of police power over urban space. The late eighteenth and first half of the nineteenth centuries is revealed as a formative period in the development of anxieties around ordering the urban sphere, in which the legal categories ‘lurking’ and ‘loitering’ evoked powerful concerns. It argues that the police regulation of urban order by targeting the ‘suspicious characters’ who threatened it is a deep structure of policing, which merits further examination to understand deep-rooted police stereotyping practices.

摘要

虽然 19 世纪英国城市秩序的警察监管理念受到了学术界的极大关注，但人们对这种类型的治安在实践中的运作方式的参与却很有限。本文通过首次考察“潜伏”和“游荡”这两个法律术语的演变和谱系，这两个法律术语构成了 18 世纪后期警察怀疑语言的重要组成部分，本文强调了这种法律语言在对城市空间行使警察权力。18 世纪末和 19 世纪上半叶被揭示为围绕城市秩序的焦虑发展的形成时期，在此期间，“潜伏”和“游荡”的法律类别引起了强烈的关注。