Female criminal police
The Female Criminal Police ( WKP ) was an organizational branch of the police in Germany , which was primarily responsible for underage offenders, victims and witnesses. Unlike in Hamburg, the WKP offices in Prussia only included female employees who performed their duties in civilian clothes. The organizational form of the female criminal police emerged in the 1920s and was dissolved as part of the reorganization of the police in the 1970s. Her relatives were integrated into the criminal police .
tasks
The female criminal police were responsible for minors (at that time up to 21 years of age) at risk of criminal and sexually endangered sex. She processed criminal complaints against female children , adolescents and adolescents and questioned witnesses or victims (especially sex offenses) in this age group. In the case of boys, she was only responsible for children up to 14 years of age. The task of the WKP was not only to conduct repressive investigations, but also to protect victims and deal with disadvantaged problem groups. WKP officers helped initiate educational and welfare measures. They cooperated with welfare institutions in providing care measures for their clientele .
history
Beginnings
The first employment of women in the police force in Germany took place in 1923 in Cologne. At the insistence of feminists in Cologne, in collaboration with colleagues from the British Voluntary Police, the role model and financier was the British occupying power that occupied the city after the First World War . Nine women served as uniformed "women's welfare police". They dealt with vulnerable young people and prostitutes during patrols . Since March 1924 the former welfare worker Josephine Erkens has been its director . In 1925 the project was discontinued for cost reasons; but Reichstag politicians were considering integrating women into the police force.
In 1926/1927, the states of Baden (female police), Saxony (women's police), Prussia (female criminal police) and Hamburg (female criminal police) decided in favor of a female police force based on different models. It was to be built in Prussia by Josephine Erkens, who was appointed to train as a detective commissioner at the Frankfurt am Main police headquarters in 1926. However, Erkens decided to go to Hamburg because of the better conditions for her concept. From there she was on site and in a number of other European countries until 1931 with the support of the social democracy , of which she became a member, very successfully. In their “Hamburg system”, male detective officers were also employed under female management in “Kriminalinspektion F”. In 1928, Erkens gave a lecture to the League of Nations . She has also been invited to give lectures in Holland, Denmark, Sweden and Switzerland.
Friedrike Wieking , since 1921 head of the women's welfare office in the Berlin police headquarters, built up the female criminal police in Prussia from 1927 onwards. In April 1927 the seven police officers in Berlin were combined to form a "Kriminalinspektion-K". Wieking was initially in the shadow of Josefine Erkens until she was overthrown by a public bullying intrigue by her superior Friedrich Schlanbusch in the summer of 1931 against the background of growing influences from the German National People's Party and the National Socialists .
time of the nationalsocialism
The development phase of the WKP fell during the National Socialist era . After the Prussian State Criminal Police Office had been converted into the Reich Criminal Police Office (RKPA) in 1935, the National Socialists also reorganized the female police force in 1937 and expanded them further. Every larger office of the criminal police got a WKP office. Their work was now based on racial principles. There is evidence that female police took part in the so-called provision of transports of Jews as well as in the establishment of National Socialist youth homes in attacked areas, for example in Poland and Latvia. Wieking, who joined the National Socialist Women's Association in June 1934 and also belonged to the National Socialist Association of Officials, headed the WKP's activities as a criminal director from Department I of the RKPA. On July 1, 1939, the “Reich Central Office for Combating Juvenile Crime” was incorporated into the WKP. Since 1941 she was responsible for the Moringen youth protection camp , and from May 1942 also for the Uckermark girls' camp in Ravensbrück . Wieking was the only female detective to be imprisoned by the Soviets for five years in 1945 .
post war period
After the Second World War , the WKP was retained in the three western occupation zones against renewed British reform efforts. A precondition for the employment of WKP employees was previous training in a social profession. The WKP was an independent part of the organization within the criminal police. For example, at the beginning of the 1960s, the Lower Saxony police station had around 110 employees. In 1961 they processed around 22,000 investigations, the majority of which were related to moral and property crimes.
With the reorganization of the criminal police in the 1970s, the offices of the female criminal police were gradually dissolved. The officers were integrated into the criminal police . After that, women continued to be employed by the criminal police, but only from 1978 onwards, starting in Berlin in 1978, followed by Hamburg in 1979, most recently in Bavaria from 1990.
literature
- Friedrike Wieking : The development of the female criminal police in Germany from the beginning to the present. , Lübeck 1958.
See also
Web links
- History of the female police force European Network of Police Officers (ENP)
- Women and Police Youth Work in Civil Rights & Police / CILIP
Individual evidence
- ↑ Women in the police force | CILIP Institute and Journal. Retrieved November 7, 2018 .