Policing and War in Europe (Criminal Justice History)

Policing and War in Europe. (Criminal Justice History, Volume ) Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press. Pp. xvi, $ ISBN
Table of contents

Basing itself on the development of scientific and medical knowledge and on the social laboratory made available by prison populations, criminal anthropology developed an explication that focused on racial degeneration. Thus the development of alternatives to prison can be interpreted as human progress but also as a re-invention of methods for controlling the poor. An extension of police control, the rationalisation of practices of justice, and sentencing according to State norms — were three vectors of a modernisation of the apparatus of social regulation in Western countries.

Interpretations differ as to the most influential group, the eclecticism or the effectiveness of these tendencies in accordance with a conflictual or rather consensual vision of crime. It seems clear that penal systems are not monolithic tools in the hands of the upper classes for the purpose of oppressing the working class, or to impose a middle-class culture on them as is maintained by conflict theorists.

Clive Emsley

Sectors such as conflict regulation at work and in business do appear to benefit the affluent classes, while others treat more or less identically the bourgeois, the worker, or the peasant, as claimed in consensual theories of crime. Finally, the study of individual life trajectories gives us a complex vision of the place of a criminal sentence in the career of a convicted criminal. Despite these nuances we must recognise that up to the end of the twentieth century the dominant classes in cities and rural elites were largely exempt from the control of the police, from criminal judgments and prison sentences, in comparison with what was done to members of the poorer classes, or to immigrants.

At the end of a long process, prison remains a major problem as regards social regulation of conflicts in the early twenty-first century.

To discipline, to judge, to punish, to isolate from society, to treat, to re-socialise — the functions of forced imprisonment in contemporary societies — change, but do not diminish. Neither do their targets.

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Populations of men, young people and immigrants remain the main targets of incarceration policies in Europe, which explains the inability to get away from a recourse to detention in discussions on treatment for juvenile delinquency. During the second half of the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth, during the colonial period — and in two wars of occupation —50 , Europe was affected by two types of experience involving authoritarian regimes.

These present comparable characteristics in terms of crime and justice. Regulating authorities overlapped colonisers or occupiers, colonised societies or occupied societies. Colonisers or occupiers used police and exceptional military enforcement as well as exceptional procedures torture, imprisonment without trial , and carried out exceptional punishments both public and corporal.

Dominated populations colonised or occupied were absorbed into the system of the dominant people. It is ironic that on the Continent those nations involved in colonial domination became subjected to military domination during the world wars.


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The experience of the Napoleonic wars had already been accompanied by the creation of extraordinary justice systems operating in parallel to the regular justice system. This extraordinary justice was supported by the development of military police, the modernisation of military courts and their purpose to try civilians during counter-revolutionary unrest, government control of courts, judges and jury members, and the development of severe administrative measures labour camps, deportation.

The colonial conquests of European nations were largely based on these extraordinary instruments military police, extraordinary courts, deportation. The two world wars —18 and —45 left their mark on the apparatus of social control by extending these extraordinary measures, particularly during long-term occupations. Colonisation introduced changes in the conception and the policies associated with the judicialisation of crimes.

Legislation adopted by colonising countries Great Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Portugal, the Netherlands, Belgium distinguished norms for Europeans from norms to be applied to the colonised populations. Such discrimination was justified through a discourse on racial hierarchy sometimes expressed in evolutionary terms. Recent work has shown how hard the colonisers tried to prohibit certain practices that were normal for the indigenous people e. Other research has shown that crimes committed by the colonised people against Europeans were most severely punished, especially when violence was involved homicide or sexual aggression against a white woman.

More recent work has emphasised crimes committed by colonists against indigenous people. After the Second World War, the urbanisation of colonies and the rise to power of local, Westernised elites brought about a transformation in methods of social control: Wars and occupations favoured the appearance of new crimes. After the First World War, an attempt in Leipzig in at achieving international justice regarding war crimes failed. It appeared impossible to have military crimes judged within the framework of national legislation.

The Second World War saw the emergence of new types of war crime: Considered as unforgivable crimes, responsibility for which should never be avoided as a result of the mere passage of time, that is, through a statute of limitations, they become subjects for the historian nonetheless. As much in a colonial situation as in a situation of military occupation, maintaining order is a major preoccupation for the authorities because of the unequal demographic relationship between colonists and the colonised, or occupiers and the occupied.

Most colonising countries used military police gendarmes or army units trained to keep order and suppress revolts. During the interwar years in Great Britain and after the Second World War, these police forces entered a rapprochement with metropolitan police forces: This transformation explains the creation of post-colonial police forces in accordance with the colonial model in new States. In Europe at the start of the s, totalitarian regimes, whether fascist, Franco-ist, Soviet or Nazi used State police forces to carry out programmes of strict population control.

The Nazi regime, especially, tried to control the police forces and coordinate their activities during the war — including Interpol. Many studies have documented the ordinary and extraordinary operation of police forces under occupation.

Derniers numéros

The case of Brussels, occupied by Germans in both —18 and —44, opens up new interpretations of social control during an occupation. After the Second World War, Belgian, French or Dutch police and gendarmes had to steer clear of collaboration, attentisme or resistance to the occupier, without forgetting their increased responsibility for the ordinary guidance of the occupied population. At the end of the war police forces were purged and reorganised by their governments, while adopting some practices learned from the encounter with the occupying police forces.

Colonial wars fought by Western nations have accentuated the role of military justice in repression, the protection of colonists and efforts to discipline colonial troops. For this reason during the two world wars there was an enormous expansion of military justice systems, and these systems increased their own competence as they increased the number of cases they dealt with. In occupied Europe military tribunals for the occupiers would judge more and more types of civilians resisters, deserters and those who shirked compulsory work service, dissenters.

Most often, fundamental rights acquired during the century of bourgeois democracy judgment in your own language, free defence, appeals were ignored under these jurisdictions. The unequal treatment received by colonial and occupied populations appears clearly in the panel of punishments. Corporal punishment, public execution, prison and labour camps were the most visible forms of colonial domination. The use of the cane or the whip, public executions, things no longer permitted in the European States, were used in the colonies as symbols of colonial domination.

These punishments were rarely given to Europeans, who benefited from rights accorded to their fellow metropolitan citizens; colonial administrations were unwilling to use punishments on Europeans that were considered to be exclusively for the indigenous peoples so as not to weaken the notion that Europeans were a dominant group.

Crime and criminal justice history in Germany. A report on recent trends

Prisons and work camps repeated the presence of the political and economic domination of the colonisers. The use of forced labour allowed the weakness of the public administration to be remedied, especially as regards the maintenance of infrastructure and the clearing of undeveloped land.

Finally, penitentiary exile was intensively used against opponents of colonial regimes, especially during the world wars and the Cold War. Not until the s would discourses and practices aimed at re-socialisation, used in urban prisons in Europe education, occupational training, health, etc. With regard to punishment in occupied Europe and among troops engaged in fighting there was a return of the death penalty, which had been in decline since the nineteenth century.

During the First World War military justice was used by military authorities in order to maintain discipline. The executions of and in the English and French armies, or after Caporetto for the Italian army, illustrate this point. Nonetheless, German military justice was motivated by another current, one more attentive to the condition of soldiers mental troubles, lack of morale , something that was seized on as a weakness by Nazi ideologues later on.

In occupied countries individuals suspected of espionage or informing could be deported to the occupying country, or shot by a firing squad, something that happened to hundreds. During the Second World War the development went in the other direction. Imprisonment went through a change of scale during the twentieth century. This was the century of concentration camps and political prisons, even prisons for particular groups, i. All this happened in the shadow of the two world wars. In France during the First World War, from —50 in Spain during the civil war, and in totalitarian regimes, Italy, Germany and the Soviet Union in the inter-bellum, during the Second World War and during the Cold War, imprisonment was often accompanied by deportation.

Extermination was even used as a tool for managing occupied populations. The large-scale occupation of Europe by Axis forces entailed the detention of large numbers of prisoners of war and the mass deportation of political opponents, also the swift execution of armed resisters. The exploitation of prisoners as labourers was especially located in Eastern Europe. Convicts, whether their conviction was for political or ordinary crimes, or for racial issues, all ended up in the concentration camp network that Germany had created as part of its policy of extermination.

The wars and their aftermath were marked by massive use of prisoner labour and work camps, partly to help manage the large numbers of prisoners, partly to punish those suspected of having collaborated with the enemy. In some instances this labour was a temporary boost for the reconstruction of devastated economies. Colonial and war experiences belong to the same set of questions. How can representations of crime and a criminal justice system be made to work towards demographic, economic, political, cultural and military domination?

Criminology has much to learn about periods of exceptionality in social and legal relations wars, military occupations or colonisation which demonstrate the destructive power of modern techniques and expertise developed in a context of bourgeois democracies confident in the reality of human progress. The colonial experience demonstrates how deeply the penal systems of Western nation-States were implanted in societies that before colonisation knew little of the bureaucratic way of solving conflict. Whether they knew it or not, they were part and parcel of a project of domination and exploitation, to the benefit and profit of the industrialised societies.

Research does show that the interactions between colonising metropoles, the colonial society and colonised ethnic groups were complex. In addition, models of colonial justice changed, along with Western society, through international upheavals, especially during the two world wars and the Cold War. The experience of war challenged the democratic character of the models of treatment of crime in Europe. On one hand the bureaucratic modernity of penal systems reinforces the terrible effectiveness of segregationist and nihilist policies that are pursued by totalitarian regimes.

On another hand, research has shown the extent to which these systems were not all-powerful machines, and that social actors played fundamental roles in them Baumann , Browning , Gerlach Financial limits, administrative rivalries and personal choices allowed individuals and groups to slow down, even to sabotage destructive policies. These war experiences showed how far the tendency towards the protection of rights that characterises the debate on the judicial system in democracies could fall behind certain imperatives regarding the protection of public order and the need for military domination.

Extraordinary policing and justice function with the same procedures and individuals as ordinary courts in a State governed by law. In describing the last sixty years, the ground on which the historian conducts his or her crime research merges with that of the criminologist in their analysis of the new challenges facing post-war societies with respect to changes in crime and in its control in Europe.

Epistemologically it is premature to produce a historical reading of recent change. After the Second World War changes in the state of crime and its control in Europe proceeded along the same lines, together with an expansion of criminological sciences. The sciences of crime contributed to the construction of policies regarding crime consciously pursued by States in the context of the welfare State, and then during economic crises.

Crime, Police, and Penal Policy: European Experiences 1750-1940

Observed nationwide, these scientific practices would become more and more widespread. The question of crime became international thanks to international forums Council of Europe, UN , and States and NGOs mobilised to respond to the various international fears occasioned by the globalisation of the criminal world. Europeans today are often obsessed with crime; this attitude is linked to an acceleration and extension of the role of the media in constructing the perception of crime.

This introduces an increasing gap between immediate perceptions, ideological readings of danger and depth analyses by researchers. The debate over interpersonal violence is a good example. Predatory behaviour and urban incivility are of great concern to working-class people and the elderly. Public insults and sexual aggression cause worry for women and minorities.

Otherwise, the development of drug addiction leads to concern about the organised crime gangs that are reputed to generate big profits in the area of illegal trafficking: At the other end of the social spectrum, a connection to white-collar crime appears equally bound up with the ambiguous relationship connecting the State, politics, and various business communities in postwar society. Researchers have been able to discern a connection between social exclusion, poor education, the absence of economic development, decaying inner cities, and crime, particularly in the large cities in Europe.

A loss of social cohesion succeeded former fears concerning the degeneration of the human race — Interactions between police and people, the way the courts work, and the management of punishment have been criticised, generally with regard to the role of the State in the regulation of conflict. The critique is further sharpened by disenchantment with the process of constructing Europe, which is thought to be unable, as an institution, to combat crime, either in the area of transnational criminality or migration.

After the Second World War the criminal question in Europe became a major subject of dispute causing distress for many Europeans, while at the same time there was an increase in economic uncertainty and social diversity. Based on a mythical vision of a harmonious society, does a plea for a return to informal, community-based control actually conceal a future massive disinvestment by the State regarding the management of conflicts over property, and a focusing of fear onto serious violence and also the absence of a unified European response to crime?

These contradictions are at the heart of a programme of future work called for by both criminologists and historians. The Routledge Handbook of E Gender and crime in Europe The informal economy in Eur We are using cookies to provide statistics that help us give you the best experience of our site. You can find out more in our Privacy Policy.

By continuing to use the site you are agreeing to our use of cookies. Free trial voucher code. Enter keywords, authors, DOI etc. This book provides a synthesis of recent research on the history of crime and criminal justice in Europe from the midth to the midth centuries. It tackles the subject chronologically, paying due attention to the evolving economic, social, and political aspects of the continent over the two centuries. It addresses specifically the different forms of criminal offending and the changing interpretations and understandings of that offending at both elite and popular levels.

It explores how both old regimes and the new nation states, that emerged in the early 19th century, responded to crimina It explores how both old regimes and the new nation states, that emerged in the early 19th century, responded to criminal activity with the development of police forces and the refinement of forms of punishment. The book has a comparative perspective and it draws attention to the ways in which different states observed each other's institutions, and adopted and moulded what suited them.

It emphasises also the ways in which different reformers exchanged ideas and investigated policing and penal policy in other countries. These kinds of exchanges and observations are commonly missed with the usual focus on a single country or region. There is engagement throughout with the theoretical issues that have underpinned much of the recent research in the area, but the book aims to eschew any close identification with a single theoretical standpoint.

During the first weeks of Nazi domination, in the process of their coordination Gleichschaltung , the Gestapo homogenized the political police of the German states. The Gestapo law of confirmed the structure that had been established in Among the public, the Gestapo rapidly acquired the notoriety of being omnipresent. Such, at least, was the traditional picture. However, recent research has questioned this image. A study by Reinhard Mann first raised doubts Second, the evidence also indicated that denunciations reached a peak from to , parallel to the Blitzkrieg and military success.

Gellately also traces the surprising and enormous drop-back involving the surveillance and control of Poles during the war. The authors originally expected to show popular resistance to Nazism or, at least, a range of noncompliance. The authors show, for instance, that less than 50 percent of the rank-and-file Gestapo officials were members of the Nazi party or Nazi organizations. Mallmann and Paul also point to the inability of the local post to keep track of the flood of orders issued from the Gestapo head office in Berlin, the Gestapa Geheimes Staatspolizeiamt.

Indeed, during the war there appears to have been a degree of deprofessionalization as many experienced officials were transferred to the SD Sicherheitsdienst , the Secret Military Police. This account of the deficiencies and inefficiencies of a local post underlines the crucial role of support and cooperation among the broad majority of German citizens. Here again those top-down perspectives, which had already been scrutinized in other fields of German crime and criminal justice history, were questioned.

But increasingly, this social history of terror has been critically examined with stress, once again, on the terror exercised by the Gestapo The results of this research have had a considerable impact on a relatively new interdisciplinary field: But the allied forces not only wanted control; they wanted also completely to reconstruct the German police. Although in practice each of the allies proceeded differently in its zone, certain general principles were agreed on, such as the abolition of the Gestapo, the dismissal of Nazis among police personnel, and the complete reversal of the centralizing policy pursued by the Nazis with reference to the police.

In the British zone this reversal led, more or less, to a complete abolition of the traditional German police system. The military government and the German authorities alike aimed at implementing what was perceived as the English model. They replaced state police by local and communal police forces. The abolition of all communal and local police forces and, during the early years of the Federal Republic, the reintroduction and remilitarization of riot police units which were shaped, according to the riot police model established by the Prussian government of the Weimar Republic, were seen as indicators of the continuities.

More recent research describes how changes in the overall functioning of the police, which had been introduced by the British and American Military Administrations, were maintained alongside questionable continuities, most notably in regard to the personnel of the police Research and publications on the Stasi 56 vastly outnumber those on the ordinary Volkspolizei of the GDR The history of early modem crime and criminal justice, and the later development of police in particular, have stimulated increasing interest among German scholars.

Other lacunae shrink as, for example, in the case of prison history. A late start sometimes has substantial advantages. Large sections of German crime and criminal justice hisotry now operate on an understanding that claims about control, conflicts, justice and so forth, are part of cultural and social processes. Eine Geschichte der Kriminologiedes Berding, H, Klippel, D. Zur Konfliktgeschichte des Alltagslebens im Eine Geschichte der Einsperrung in Sachsen im Gewalt und Emotionen im Das Gesetz als Waffe.

Geschichte einer gebrochenen Verwissenschaftlichung , Stuttgart, Die Entstehung der modernen Rechtsordnung im Zeitzeugen erinnern sich , Hilden, Verlag Deutsche Polizeiliteratur, 2nd. Ideen, Experten und Gesetzgebung in den deutschen Staaten des Das organsierte Bandenwesen im Arbeitserziehungslager im Dritten Reich , Stuttgart. Polizei, Gesellschaft und Herrschaft im Germany , in Emsley, C. Eine Geschichte der Todesstrafe vom Fanatische Nationalsozialisten oder ganz normale Deutsche? Zur Geschichte der Polizei im Jahrhundert, Frankfurt , Campus Verlag, Peinliche Strafjustiz im geistlichen Territorium.

Kriminalpolitik zwischen Wissenschaft und Praxis im Die Bonner Polizei im Nationalsozialismus , Bonn, On the codification of penal in the German states during the 19 th century see Kesper-Biermann Quantitative approaches as in Zehr and in Johnson are not part of this new history of crime and criminal justice in Germany. German Crime and Criminal Justice Histories. German Police during the Nineteenth and Twentieth centuries.