Crime Driven Technology and the Motor Bandit

In inter-war England the motor bandit became a criminal folk devil representing the dark side of expanding motorcar ownership. Bandits advanced use of motor technology left police running, sometimes literally, to catch up. Fears outweighed the threat, but the perceived danger played a key role in initiating establishment of motorised police squads as bandits provided a flexible and non-political figure. The Metropolitan Police experimented with techniques to deal with banditry, specifically how to stop a speeding car, which was fraught with difficulties. Discussions about tackling threats posed by a motorised mass society have since become a constant in police and security concerns. This article makes use of contemporary newspapers, commentary and Metropolitan Police files to identify the development of official and public discussion about how to stop speeding motor vehicles and tensions between interventionist policing methods and public and police safety. It then relates that directly to strategies underpinning the development of urban fortress urbanism in the early twenty-first century.