A legacy of the Napoleonic police system, the protocols list the provenance, subject matter, and determination of each communication received or sent by the police and thus offer the historian a bureaucratic distillation of police activity across time. In this case, the protocols of three sample years (1823, 1843, and 1863), which span the shift from the absolutist papal regime to the liberal unitary government, have been analyzed according to the correspondent (e.g., private party, other administrators, religious officials) and subject matter (e.g., private mortality, public order, crime prevention). Results suggest that administrative policing dominated under both regimes, and that police intervention into private matters (e.g., family disputes, wayward children, illicit pregnancies) was consistently in demand throughout the period. Continuity dominated over change during the political shift, although the nature of religious, political, and charitable police functions did alter somewhat to fit the new liberal government's ideology of private freedom and public control. 18 notes, 6 tables, 2 figures, 17 references, 5 appendixes. (Author abstract)