The text also uses information theory, systems theory, and other approaches to describe society in terms of symbolic communication and to discuss the role of information and its interpretation. The author describes the modern police as a modification of a traditional organizational form that emerged in England in the early 19th century and that was transformed in the United States. The author notes that police have made crime control their primary legitimating theme and have grown in strength, power, and authority in recent years, despite the reality that a variety of structural factors prevent them from controlling crime. The discussion emphasizes that policing is a drama that symbolizes social control, that it represents morality and standards of civility and decency by which people measure themselves, and its mysterious quality attached endures because it is a service that society assembles to stimulate the best in citizens on behalf of others. Figures, table, chapter notes, index, and approximately 500 references