Who Catches a Criminal With No Police? Everybody He Lives With

Adult men below the rank of landholder were required to belong to a group of roughly ten households, and that group stood surety for each of its members. If one was accused of an offence, the group was responsible for producing him before the court, and if they failed to do so the group was fined collectively. Membership was compulsory rather than voluntary, and a man not in one could not lawfully remain in a village. Twice a year a court reviewed the arrangement, checking that every man was enrolled and that the groups were complete, which is where the surviving records come from.

The arrangement addressed several problems at once with no paid officials:

• •Somebody was always answerable for producing an accused person
• •The group had strong reasons to watch its own members
• •Strangers could not settle without being vouched for
• •Pursuit of an offender was a duty falling on everybody present
• •The cost of enforcement fell on the community rather than the crown
• •The courts reviewing it also recorded who lived where

Enforcement depended on a related obligation that made every inhabitant part of the machinery. Anybody discovering a serious crime was required to raise an outcry, and everybody who heard it was required to drop what they were doing and join the pursuit, on pain of a fine for failing to do so. That duty applied across parish boundaries, with the chase handed on as it crossed into the next community. Neighbouring villages that failed to take up a pursuit could be fined. The arrangement makes sense in a landscape where an offender on foot could be caught by a crowd and would struggle to disappear.

The twice-yearly courts reviewing the arrangement generated documents that survive in quantity and are used for purposes far beyond legal history. Lists record which men belonged to which group and therefore who was living in a village at a given date, which fills gaps in an era with no census. Fines recorded against groups indicate where offences happened and how they were handled. Entries noting men who had left, arrived or reached the age of enrolment track movement between communities. Because the courts met regularly and recorded routinely, the series can be followed over decades, which makes them among the better sources for ordinary rural population.

The system declined through the later medieval period and the reasons follow from social change. Greater movement of people, including after the plague reduced the population and loosened obligations tying people to a manor, made stable groups of neighbours harder to maintain. Towns grew, and the arrangement suited a village where everybody knew everybody rather than a street of strangers. Justices of the peace from the fourteenth century created an alternative structure with appointed officials. The collective liability survived in form long after it stopped working, and formal policing arrived only in the nineteenth century, which is a very long gap.

Groups of roughly ten households stood surety for each member and were fined collectively if they failed to produce an accused man, which made enforcement a community obligation costing the crown nothing. An outcry obliged everybody hearing it to join the pursuit, across parish boundaries. Movement of people and the growth of towns broke the arrangement, and formal policing did not arrive for centuries.