Military and police

Military and police

Main articles: Military and Police

U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers

The military and police are sometimes referred to as "the long and strong arm of the law".^[112] While military organisation have existed as long as governments themselves, a standing police force is relatively modern. Mediæval England used a system of travelling criminal courts, or assizes, which used show trials and public executions to instill communities with fear and keep them under control. The first modern police were probably those in 17th-century Paris, in the court of Louis XIV,^[113] although the Paris Prefecture of Police claim they were the world's first uniformed policemen.^[114] In 1829, after the French Revolution and Napoleon's dictatorship, a government decree created the first uniformed policemen in Paris and all other French cities, known as sergents de ville ("city sergeants"). In Britain, the Metropolitan Police Act 1829 was passed by Parliament under Home Secretary Sir Robert Peel, founding the London Metropolitan Police.

Sociologist Max Weber famously argued that the state is that which controls the legitimate monopoly of the means of violence.^[115] The military and police carry out enforcement at the request of the government or the courts. The term failed state is used where the police and military no longer control security and order and society moves into anarchy, the absence of government.