New Means to Old Ends 83commissioners were well aware that there were limits to what the men
responsible for street policing could actually accomplish.
The efforts of parish watch authorities in the late eighteenth century show
the influence of the new discourse on criminal justice and reform. Respond-
ing to complaints from residents, watch committees took steps in the direc-
tions urged by reformers. Parish officials worked both to improve
accountability and the certainty of prevention and detection. Watch commit-
tees improved supervision, using hierarchical structures and increasingly
bureaucratic management techniques. Parishes tried to hire better-qualified
men, looking for those willing to work full time at policing. Learning from
and contributing to the current debates about how best to prevent crime,
local watch authorities used more men, different shifts, shorter beats, and
other tactics to increase the certainty that crime would be observed and thus
prevented or detected. And J.M. Beattie's impression from his extensive
study of trials is 'that watchmen were providing more effective surveillance
in the second half of the century than they had earlier and that they were
responsible for apprehending more suspected offenders in the streets ... than
accounts of the watch as decrepit and ineffectual bumblers are likely to lead
one to expect'.^170 The night watches of the late eighteenth century had
evolved into police forces in the modem sense.