The Image of the Police in the Press, Literature and Cinema: An Analysis of its Evolution in the Anglo-Saxon Model
Abstract We can find police forces in every modern society. However, police forces had not always existed, the very created some two hundred years ago, based on social commitment of the citizens, prone to accept some occasional limitations in search of the greater good. Therefore, the police roll ins base on social acceptance. The purpose of the current work is analysing which image have the citizens about police forces from their creation, valuating at which extent that image bolsters police prestige (or otherwise) and the propensity of citizenship to cooperate with the police. On those grounds, we make a thorough historical scrutiny through media, literature and movies, to verify people’s opinion about police forces. We focus on detective duties as a paradigm and its popularity among the public is scrutinized. The context of this work is Anglo-Saxon societies and police forces, essentially in Great Britain and the United States.
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Alcantara, L., Mitsuhashi, H., y Hoshino, Y. (2006). Legitimacy in international joint ventures: It is still needed. Journal of International Management, 12(4), 389-407.
Allan Poe, E. (1841). Obras clásicas de siempre. Los asesinatos de la Rue de la Morgue. Edición digital. Derechos reservados. Biblioteca Digital © Instituto Latinoamericano de la Comunicación Educativa ILCE. Recuperado de http://bibliotecadigital.ilce.edu.mx.
Ashby, L. (2006). With amusement for all: A story of the American popular culture since 1830 (p. 258). The Kentucky University Press.
Beetham, D. (1991). The legitimation of power. Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press.
Berger, P. y Luckmann, T. (2003). La construcción social de la realidad. 18.ª impresión. Buenos Aires: Amorrortu.
Bonner, M. D., y Dammert, L. (2022). Constructing police legitimacy during protests: frames and consequences for human rights. Policing & Society, 32(5), 629-645. https://doi.org/10.1080/10439463.2021.1957887
Bottoms, A., y Tankebe, J. (2012). Beyond Procedural justice: A dialogic approach to legitimacy in criminal justice. The Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, 102(1), 119-170.
Breuer, William B. J. (1995). Edgar Hoover and his G Men. Wesport, Connecticut; London.: Praeger.
Cabanillas Sánchez, J. (2018). Historia General de la Policía Española. Madrid: Fundación Policía Española.
Chalmers, D. M. (1981). Hooded Americanism: The History of the Ku Klux Klan. Duke University Press.
Clarke, J. (2001). The Pleasures of Crime: Interrogating the Detectice Story. En E. McLaughlin y J. Muncie, The Problem of Crime. Sage Publications in association with the Open University.
Cohen, S. (2019). Folk Devils and Moral Panics: The Creation of Mods and Rockers (1972–2002). In Crime and media (pp. 461-482). Routledge. Psychology Press
Coleman, J. W. (1936). The Molly Maguire riots: industrial conflict in the Pennsylvania coal region. Garrett and Massie.
De Tocqueville, A. (1835-1840) La democracia en América. Consultado : https://www.suneo.mx/literatura/subidas/Alexis%20de%20Tocqueville%20La%20Democracia%20en%20America.pdf
Del Olmo Fernández, I. (2021). El laberinto y la diosa triple. Up Words Media. Ed. Altaveu.
Demleitner, Nora V. (1994). Organized crime and prohibition: What difference does legalization make. Whittier L. Rev., 15, 613.
Dowler, K. (2002). Media influence on citizen attitudes toward police effectiveness. Policing and Society, 12(3), 227-238.
Edwards, J. N. (1877). Noted Guerrillas or the warfare on the border. Saint Louis: Bryan, Brand and company.
Eliade, M. (1985). Lo sagrado y lo profano. Colección Libera los Libros. Ed. Guadarrama, Punto Omega.
Emsley, C. (2001). The origins and development of police. En E. McLaughlin y J. Muncie, Controlling Crime. Sage Publications in association with the Open University.
Emsley, C. (2005). El ejército, la policía y el mantenimiento del orden público en Inglaterra (c. 1750-1950). Política y Sociedad, 42(3), 15-29.
Emsley, C. (2012). The birth and development of the police. En Handbook of policing (pp. 72-89). Willan.
Gale, R. (2000). A Dashiell Hammett Companion (pp. 42-43). Westport, Connecticut. London: Greenwood Press.
Giddens, A. (1990). The Consequences of Modernity. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Gunderson G. (1974). The Origin of the American Civil War. The Journal of Economic History, 34(4), 915-950. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0022050700089361
Hammett, J. (2001). Dashiell Hammett: A Daughter Remembers. Carroll & Graf.
Herrero Fernández Quesada, M.ª D. y Turrado Vidal, M. (2023) “Estudio preliminar”. En Los orígenes de la Policía Nacional. Dos siglos al servicio de la sociedad española (1824-2024). Ministerio del interior. Fundación Policía española. Agencia Estatal Boletín Oficial del Estado. Madrid, 2023.
Hobbes, T. (1651). El Leviatán. Freeditorial. Version en PDF. Consultado https://www.suneo.mx/literatura/subidas/Thomas%20Hobbes%20Leviatan.pdf
Jackson, J., y Bradford, B. (2010). What is Trust and Confidence in the Police? Policing: A Journal of Policy and Practice, 4(3), 241-248.
Jeffrey-Jones, R. (2007). The FBI: A History. Yale University Press.
Jenkins, P. (2017). A history of the United States. Bloomsbury Publishing.
Kauffman, Michael W. (2005). American Brutus: John Wilkes Booth and the Lincoln conspiracy. Random House Trade Paperbacks.
Keegan, J. (2011). The American civil war. Random House.
Kenny, K. (1998). Making sense of the Molly Maguires. Oxford University Press.
Konnikova, M. (2016). ¿Cómo piensa Sherlock Holmes? Ed. Booklet.
Layman, R. (1981). Shadow Man: The Life of Dashiell Hammett. Manly Editions.
Marcus, S. (2007). Introducción. En El agente de la Continental. Biblioteca Hammett. Madrid: Alianza Editorial.
Marx, K. y Engels, F. (1932 [1848]). Manifiesto comunista. Ediciones Europa-América.
Muncie, J. (2001). The construction and deconstruction of crime. En Muncie, J., y McLaughlin, E. (Eds.). (2001). The problem of crime. Sage Publications in association with the Open University.
Nachman, G. (1998). Raised on Radio (p. 302). California University Press.
Oglesby-Neal, A., Tiry, E., y Kim, K. (2019). Public perceptions of police on social media. Urban Institute, 12, 1-12.
Ousby, I. (1976). Bloodhounds of Heaven: The Detective in English Fiction from Godwin to Doyle. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Pearson, G. (1984). Hooligan: A history of respectable fears. Schocken.
Pinkerton, A. (2022 [1877]). The Molly Maguires and the detectives. Publicado como facsímil por Open Road Integrated Media. New York.
Pinkerton, R. A. (1901). Detective Surveillance of Anarchists. The North American Review, 173(540) 609-617.
Potter, C. B. (1998). War on crime: bandits, G-Men and the Politics of Mass culture. Rutgers University Press.
Powers, R. G. (2004). Broken: a troubled past and uncertain future of the FBI. Free Press, a Division of Simon and Schuster.
Powers, S. P., Rothman, D. J., y Rothman, S. (1996). Hollywood’s America: Social and Political Themes in Motion Pictures. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
Reiner, R. (2003). Policing and the media. En Handbook of Policing (313-335), Second Edition (2008). Edited by Tim Newbury. William Publising, 2008
Reiner, R. (2007). Media made criminality. En M. Maguire et al. (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Criminology (302-337). 4.ª ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Reiner, R. (2012). Policing and the media. In Handbook of policing (pp. 313-336). Willan.
Reiner, R., Livingstone, S., y Allen, J. (2003). From law and order to lynch mobs: crime news since the Second World War. En P. Mason (ed.), Criminal Visions: Media Representations of Crime and Justice. Cullompton: Willan.
Reith, C. (1938). The Police idea. Its history and evolution in England in the Eighteen century and after. London, England; New York, New York; Toronto, Ontario: Oxford University Press.
Reith, C. (1943). Preventive principle of police. Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology (1931-1951), 34(3), 206-209.
Rhodehamel, J., y Taper, L. (2001). Wright or Wrong, God judge me. The writings of John Wilkes Booth. University of Illinois Press.
Rojas Marcos, L. (1992). La ciudad y sus desafíos. Espasa-Calpe.
Rousseau, J. J. (1762). El Contrato social o Principios del Derecho Político. Consultado 01.07.2025. https://www.secst.cl/upfiles/documentos/01082016_923am_579f698613e3b.pdf
Schamel, W., y Potter, L. A. (1997). The Homestead Act of 1862. Social Education, 61.6 359-364.
Schmitz, R. (2000). Red Scare: FBI and the origins of the anticommunism in the United States, 1919-1943. Museum Tusculanum Press University of Copenhagen.
Schramm, W., Lyle, J., y Parker, E. B. (1961). Television in the Lives of our Children. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Shpayer-Makov, H. (2010). From menace to celebrity: the English police detective and the press, c. 1842-1914. Historical Research, 83(222), 672-692.
Sims, M. (2014). Cuentos de detectives victorianos (recopilación). Colección Clásica Mayors, LIX. 1.ª ed. Barcelona: Ediciones Alba.
Slotkin, R. (1942). Gunfighter Nation: The Myth of the Frontier in the Twentieth century America. University of Oklahoma Press.
Squire, J. E. (ed.). (2016). The movie business book. CRC Press.
St. Louis, S., y Greene, J. R. (2020). Social context in police legitimacy: giving meaning to police/community contacts. Policing and Society, 30(6), 656-673.
Suchman, M. C. (1995). Managing legitimacy: Strategic and institutional approaches. The Academy of Management Review, 20(3), 571-610.
Theoharis, A. G. (ed.). (1999). The FBI: a comprehensive reference guide. Orix Press.
Thorwald, J. (1966). El siglo de la investigación criminal. Barcelona, Madrid, Buenos Aires, Rio de Janeiro, México, Montevideo: Editorial Labor, S. A.
Turrado Vidal, M. (2020). Historia de la Policía española. H50.es
Tyda, A. (2022). US migration policy in the 19th and 20th centuries. Designing and Implementing Public Policy in Contemporary Society: New Perspectives, 111.
Von Justi, H. G. (1756 [1996]). Ciencia del Estado. Biblioteca Jurídica virtual. UNAM Repositorio Universitario. ISBN 968-6452-16-8. URI http://ru.juridicas.unam.mx:80/xmlui/handle/123456789/10729.
Weber, M. (1946 [1922]). Class, status, party, pp. 180–95 de Max Weber Essays in Sociology, ed. H. H. Gerth y . Wright Mills. New York: Oxford University Press. New York.
Allan Poe, E. (1841). Obras clásicas de siempre. Los asesinatos de la Rue de la Morgue. Edición digital. Derechos reservados. Biblioteca Digital © Instituto Latinoamericano de la Comunicación Educativa ILCE. Recuperado de http://bibliotecadigital.ilce.edu.mx.
Ashby, L. (2006). With amusement for all: A story of the American popular culture since 1830 (p. 258). The Kentucky University Press.
Beetham, D. (1991). The legitimation of power. Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press.
Berger, P. y Luckmann, T. (2003). La construcción social de la realidad. 18.ª impresión. Buenos Aires: Amorrortu.
Bonner, M. D., y Dammert, L. (2022). Constructing police legitimacy during protests: frames and consequences for human rights. Policing & Society, 32(5), 629-645. https://doi.org/10.1080/10439463.2021.1957887
Bottoms, A., y Tankebe, J. (2012). Beyond Procedural justice: A dialogic approach to legitimacy in criminal justice. The Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, 102(1), 119-170.
Breuer, William B. J. (1995). Edgar Hoover and his G Men. Wesport, Connecticut; London.: Praeger.
Cabanillas Sánchez, J. (2018). Historia General de la Policía Española. Madrid: Fundación Policía Española.
Chalmers, D. M. (1981). Hooded Americanism: The History of the Ku Klux Klan. Duke University Press.
Clarke, J. (2001). The Pleasures of Crime: Interrogating the Detectice Story. En E. McLaughlin y J. Muncie, The Problem of Crime. Sage Publications in association with the Open University.
Cohen, S. (2019). Folk Devils and Moral Panics: The Creation of Mods and Rockers (1972–2002). In Crime and media (pp. 461-482). Routledge. Psychology Press
Coleman, J. W. (1936). The Molly Maguire riots: industrial conflict in the Pennsylvania coal region. Garrett and Massie.
De Tocqueville, A. (1835-1840) La democracia en América. Consultado : https://www.suneo.mx/literatura/subidas/Alexis%20de%20Tocqueville%20La%20Democracia%20en%20America.pdf
Del Olmo Fernández, I. (2021). El laberinto y la diosa triple. Up Words Media. Ed. Altaveu.
Demleitner, Nora V. (1994). Organized crime and prohibition: What difference does legalization make. Whittier L. Rev., 15, 613.
Dowler, K. (2002). Media influence on citizen attitudes toward police effectiveness. Policing and Society, 12(3), 227-238.
Edwards, J. N. (1877). Noted Guerrillas or the warfare on the border. Saint Louis: Bryan, Brand and company.
Eliade, M. (1985). Lo sagrado y lo profano. Colección Libera los Libros. Ed. Guadarrama, Punto Omega.
Emsley, C. (2001). The origins and development of police. En E. McLaughlin y J. Muncie, Controlling Crime. Sage Publications in association with the Open University.
Emsley, C. (2005). El ejército, la policía y el mantenimiento del orden público en Inglaterra (c. 1750-1950). Política y Sociedad, 42(3), 15-29.
Emsley, C. (2012). The birth and development of the police. En Handbook of policing (pp. 72-89). Willan.
Gale, R. (2000). A Dashiell Hammett Companion (pp. 42-43). Westport, Connecticut. London: Greenwood Press.
Giddens, A. (1990). The Consequences of Modernity. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Gunderson G. (1974). The Origin of the American Civil War. The Journal of Economic History, 34(4), 915-950. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0022050700089361
Hammett, J. (2001). Dashiell Hammett: A Daughter Remembers. Carroll & Graf.
Herrero Fernández Quesada, M.ª D. y Turrado Vidal, M. (2023) “Estudio preliminar”. En Los orígenes de la Policía Nacional. Dos siglos al servicio de la sociedad española (1824-2024). Ministerio del interior. Fundación Policía española. Agencia Estatal Boletín Oficial del Estado. Madrid, 2023.
Hobbes, T. (1651). El Leviatán. Freeditorial. Version en PDF. Consultado https://www.suneo.mx/literatura/subidas/Thomas%20Hobbes%20Leviatan.pdf
Jackson, J., y Bradford, B. (2010). What is Trust and Confidence in the Police? Policing: A Journal of Policy and Practice, 4(3), 241-248.
Jeffrey-Jones, R. (2007). The FBI: A History. Yale University Press.
Jenkins, P. (2017). A history of the United States. Bloomsbury Publishing.
Kauffman, Michael W. (2005). American Brutus: John Wilkes Booth and the Lincoln conspiracy. Random House Trade Paperbacks.
Keegan, J. (2011). The American civil war. Random House.
Kenny, K. (1998). Making sense of the Molly Maguires. Oxford University Press.
Konnikova, M. (2016). ¿Cómo piensa Sherlock Holmes? Ed. Booklet.
Layman, R. (1981). Shadow Man: The Life of Dashiell Hammett. Manly Editions.
Marcus, S. (2007). Introducción. En El agente de la Continental. Biblioteca Hammett. Madrid: Alianza Editorial.
Marx, K. y Engels, F. (1932 [1848]). Manifiesto comunista. Ediciones Europa-América.
Muncie, J. (2001). The construction and deconstruction of crime. En Muncie, J., y McLaughlin, E. (Eds.). (2001). The problem of crime. Sage Publications in association with the Open University.
Nachman, G. (1998). Raised on Radio (p. 302). California University Press.
Oglesby-Neal, A., Tiry, E., y Kim, K. (2019). Public perceptions of police on social media. Urban Institute, 12, 1-12.
Ousby, I. (1976). Bloodhounds of Heaven: The Detective in English Fiction from Godwin to Doyle. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Pearson, G. (1984). Hooligan: A history of respectable fears. Schocken.
Pinkerton, A. (2022 [1877]). The Molly Maguires and the detectives. Publicado como facsímil por Open Road Integrated Media. New York.
Pinkerton, R. A. (1901). Detective Surveillance of Anarchists. The North American Review, 173(540) 609-617.
Potter, C. B. (1998). War on crime: bandits, G-Men and the Politics of Mass culture. Rutgers University Press.
Powers, R. G. (2004). Broken: a troubled past and uncertain future of the FBI. Free Press, a Division of Simon and Schuster.
Powers, S. P., Rothman, D. J., y Rothman, S. (1996). Hollywood’s America: Social and Political Themes in Motion Pictures. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
Reiner, R. (2003). Policing and the media. En Handbook of Policing (313-335), Second Edition (2008). Edited by Tim Newbury. William Publising, 2008
Reiner, R. (2007). Media made criminality. En M. Maguire et al. (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Criminology (302-337). 4.ª ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Reiner, R. (2012). Policing and the media. In Handbook of policing (pp. 313-336). Willan.
Reiner, R., Livingstone, S., y Allen, J. (2003). From law and order to lynch mobs: crime news since the Second World War. En P. Mason (ed.), Criminal Visions: Media Representations of Crime and Justice. Cullompton: Willan.
Reith, C. (1938). The Police idea. Its history and evolution in England in the Eighteen century and after. London, England; New York, New York; Toronto, Ontario: Oxford University Press.
Reith, C. (1943). Preventive principle of police. Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology (1931-1951), 34(3), 206-209.
Rhodehamel, J., y Taper, L. (2001). Wright or Wrong, God judge me. The writings of John Wilkes Booth. University of Illinois Press.
Rojas Marcos, L. (1992). La ciudad y sus desafíos. Espasa-Calpe.
Rousseau, J. J. (1762). El Contrato social o Principios del Derecho Político. Consultado 01.07.2025. https://www.secst.cl/upfiles/documentos/01082016_923am_579f698613e3b.pdf
Schamel, W., y Potter, L. A. (1997). The Homestead Act of 1862. Social Education, 61.6 359-364.
Schmitz, R. (2000). Red Scare: FBI and the origins of the anticommunism in the United States, 1919-1943. Museum Tusculanum Press University of Copenhagen.
Schramm, W., Lyle, J., y Parker, E. B. (1961). Television in the Lives of our Children. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Shpayer-Makov, H. (2010). From menace to celebrity: the English police detective and the press, c. 1842-1914. Historical Research, 83(222), 672-692.
Sims, M. (2014). Cuentos de detectives victorianos (recopilación). Colección Clásica Mayors, LIX. 1.ª ed. Barcelona: Ediciones Alba.
Slotkin, R. (1942). Gunfighter Nation: The Myth of the Frontier in the Twentieth century America. University of Oklahoma Press.
Squire, J. E. (ed.). (2016). The movie business book. CRC Press.
St. Louis, S., y Greene, J. R. (2020). Social context in police legitimacy: giving meaning to police/community contacts. Policing and Society, 30(6), 656-673.
Suchman, M. C. (1995). Managing legitimacy: Strategic and institutional approaches. The Academy of Management Review, 20(3), 571-610.
Theoharis, A. G. (ed.). (1999). The FBI: a comprehensive reference guide. Orix Press.
Thorwald, J. (1966). El siglo de la investigación criminal. Barcelona, Madrid, Buenos Aires, Rio de Janeiro, México, Montevideo: Editorial Labor, S. A.
Turrado Vidal, M. (2020). Historia de la Policía española. H50.es
Tyda, A. (2022). US migration policy in the 19th and 20th centuries. Designing and Implementing Public Policy in Contemporary Society: New Perspectives, 111.
Von Justi, H. G. (1756 [1996]). Ciencia del Estado. Biblioteca Jurídica virtual. UNAM Repositorio Universitario. ISBN 968-6452-16-8. URI http://ru.juridicas.unam.mx:80/xmlui/handle/123456789/10729.
Weber, M. (1946 [1922]). Class, status, party, pp. 180–95 de Max Weber Essays in Sociology, ed. H. H. Gerth y . Wright Mills. New York: Oxford University Press. New York.
del Olmo Fernández, I., Briones Peñalver, A. J., & Fernández Cañavate, F. J. (2025). The Image of the Police in the Press, Literature and Cinema: An Analysis of its Evolution in the Anglo-Saxon Model. Ciencia Policial, 184, 139–194. https://doi.org/10.14201/cp.32366
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