The emergence and spread of the summons in lieu of arrest, 1907–1980

Over the past several years, police reformers in the United States have tried to develop alternatives to arrest and encourage police to use them more widely, but this work has moved forward with little awareness of similar efforts in the past. This paper provides an overview of one important strand of that history. Drawing on original archival research, it reconstructs the origins of the summons in lieu of arrest in early-20th century New York, and it chronicles the subsequent spread and transformation of this new form of police authority throughout the country. I argue that this story challenges the dominant understanding of the character of 20th century police reform. Where most historians have argued that early 20th century reforms aimed to focus police attention more narrowly on crime control, the police summons arose as an important tool to accommodate the broad array of tasks that American society increasingly expected the police to handle. Where most historians have argued that Progressive-era police reform was driven by an emerging corps of national policing experts who aimed to brush away the dysfunctional practices of the past, the development of the summons emerged from an intensely local process of experimentation that tried to understand and build on the foundation of existing practices. In these respects, the development and spread of the summons provides a distinctive image of the forms that police reform has taken in the past, as well as the forms it might potentially take in the future.