Policing like we do it today in the West with state employees going looking for violations of law didn't exist before the surpluses of the industrial revolution enabled the high touch administrative state.

In the 18th and 19th century there were far, far fewer professional local/county "police", many of the duties were performed by other offices/officials and when needed they got their muscle from community volunteers or the state (usually from the national guard or army in the US). Consequently they didn't spend much time enforcing petty civil laws and enforcing social norms because the manpower simply wasn't there and you couldn't afford to piss off the fraction of people such enforcement pisses off.

(Obviously this all varies by country and year so I'm speaking generally)