Who watches the watchmen?

Question

Background

I have a highly industrialized country that is rapidly economically growing, all the while expanding its territory (think along the lines of the USA's territorial expansion between 1820 - 1840.) There are a significant number of new settlements that are appearing, often the size of towns or small cities, with few people venturing out of these settlements due to the harsh conditions outside.
Crime is evident everywhere within these settlements, and as a result the central government authorizes civil servants in these new settlements to appoint watchmen to carry out law enforcement in these communities - but there is still the large issue of corruption, as most watchmen endure poor work conditions and large criminal syndicates are rife.

Question

I want to create a new law enforcement organization (LEO) within this world that will act as a general law enforcement agency for combating crime throughout these new territories, as well as rooting out corrupt watchmen. How would this new organization function? Are there any existing examples of LEOs as I have described?

Please note that this new LEO to not be slightly related to the watchmen, I want watchmen to see this new agency as the police that enforce law within the regular police. I drew some inspiration for this world from the American Wild West.

Answer 1

Call the Feds

Your local settlements have the right to appoint a municipal police. Their authority ends at the city limits or the county line. So there is good reason to have a national police force, running national crime databases and providing coordination. Only a little step to give them oversight over individual cases and officers.

• First, they're the ones with the databases, forensics labs, and SWAT teams. They're better paid and better trained, too.
• Next, they have the right to take cases over if they can justify the effort to their superiors. The local cops won't be asked about their opinion, they simply have to turn their files over and provide support as required.
• Only a little step to make them the internal affairs department, too.

However, you mentioned that the country is highly industrialized. I would expect that they already have a national police, if only to run the national databases, and those would be the logical force when it comes to law and order in the new territories. Either that, or military/militarized police if the new territories previously belonged to someone else.

Answer 2

During the period you describe (and later as well), towns in the American West could hire Sheriffs to enforce local laws and ordinances. Since they were essentially hiring whoever was willing to step up, the problems of corruption or lack of ability could easily be felt in the town.

The surrounding Territories were the domain of the US Marshals, who patrolled the entire territory.

By analogy, then, you have a local police force in each town and a territorial Marshal's service patrolling the wider outside areas. There was plenty of room for conflicts, especially since both criminals and the Marshals pursuing them would likely end up in towns to rest and refit, and come into contact or conflict with the local Sheriffs. Jurisdictional conflicts would be likely as a minimum, and there is also the issue of the two levels of law enforcement competing against each other for the arrest and reward, or one or both being bought off by criminals or criminal factions.

One thing which will drive potential conflicts in story would be a lack fo clear definitional or jurisdictional boundaries (a Marshall is empowered to patrol the entire territory, but does that include the towns or not?). In today's world there are clear jurisdictional boundaries, and well established cooperation protocols (unlike the movies, local cops like having help from the higher levels of law enforcement since they have access to far more resources than they have on their own).