From 1600 to 1800 Europe's population exploded. New crops from the new world and improvements in farming methods meant that more food could be produced per square kilometer and improvements in Infrastructure meant that food could be more easily transported. This meant that cities grew in size. This had a large number of side effects, from increasing literacy to the scale of the cash economy as more people were buying bread. Among this was a rise in urban criminality. Thieves could blend into the crowds more easily and had more to swipe and urban gangs increased in number. This happened in spite of some punishments which were quite brutal, such as execution for what would be considered petty theft by modern standards, floggings, deportation to colonies to work as a indentured laborer for several years (who were sometimes worked harder than slaves they worked alongside as slaves were yours until they died and their kids were yours as well) and executions like being broken on the wheel or drawing and quartering. The solution to this problem did not lie in brutality, but rather in enforcement.
Long story short, the systems of law enforcement that they used were like the punishments, medieval and horrible. What they had was that every night, a local guy would be required to wander through the streets with a torch and stick and yell at any thief until he went away or beat him with said stick if he did not run to be taken. As cities got bigger, a few burly men would be paid for by local people to wander about their neighborhood looking for thieves, who they would in turn give over to the authorities for bounty known as Thief Takers. This was not an effective system of enforcing the law for a large number of reasons. The Night Watchmen did little beyond scare the occasional thief and bring in the occasional drunker. The Thief Takers would bully anyone who was out at night and were more than willing to classify "Looking at me funny" as grounds to arrest someone for thieving if they were poor enough and focused on more well to do neighborhoods. As such, people prone to criminal behavior knew they could get away with a lot of things if they employed a modicum of caution. And if a riot broke out, soldiers were brought in to disperse (and failing that, dismember) the rioters. But then came the solution
It started in France with King Louis XIV in 1667 which he created a government body to retain a perminant body of people to patrol the streets and enforce the law. These men were assigned the title derived from the old Greek word for City, Police. A few other states would begin to hire full time enforcement bodies in various areas. Among them being the Marine Police in London in 1798. A basic beginning but a step in the right direction. But it would still be more than a century before it truly materialized.
In the early 19th century, Police Forces were expanded upon. They were expanded and they were reshaped. It expanded as officers became more formalized, uniforms were introduced and their scale increased. France was the first to go down this path and England, at first hesitant, moved down this path as well. Spearheaded by Sir Robert Peel...
...was the creation of the London Metropolitan Police Service. A civilian law enforcement agency designed to reduce crime. Its officers were at first met with distrust with the population of London, but gradually people became more accepting of them, especially as over the course of the 19th century crime levels went down as punishments became less harsh. This was due to the size and scale of the Met and its ability to apprehend criminals.
What we can take from this is the simple fact the superiority of enforcement over brutal retribution. Brutally harsh punishments is not effective way of reducing crime. If that was the case no one would have dared stole an apple in the middle ages or the age of enlightenment while modern cities would be overrun by murderers and hoodlums. What does reduce crime is policing, having constables walk the beat and be able to quickly identify and capture criminals when they commit crimes. Making a minor punishment an inevitability is a far greater way to deter crime than having a cruel, vile and sadistic one an minor risk to perpetrators.
Zor
