Policing activities are essential for any state and offer an insight into the relationship between state and society. This module explores police activities between state protection and social control in 20th century-Europe. You’ll examine the relations between the state, the police and the public tracing continuities and differences in policing dictatorships and democracies. Themes covered will range from policing during war time (WWI &WWII) and the popular fascination with crime stories over the tasks of police forces in the interwar period to the involvement of policemen in the Holocaust and the policing of protests in liberal democracies.
Tasks of the police involved protecting states of 'unruly' citizens, expressed in working-class uprisings or strikes, as well as implementing societal norms of order when policing women, youngsters or alleged 'outsiders.' In addition to social control, police forces had to react to the ever increasing complaints on rising crime rates and police failures. This suggests that police forces could not only act as organisations implementing state demands but also had to respond to issues articulated by citizens. We will also think about gender and race within policing and in police forces.
Several key questions run throughout the module: Who was protected by the police and who was regarded as a criminal? Whose interests did police forces serve? What did police officers do in dictatorships? Were police forces primarily agents of state control or protectors of the population? How did police activities in dictatorships differ from those in democracies? What was the changing relationship between the police and the citizens?
By seeking responses to these questions, we will find how policing fundamentally shaped and still shapes European societies.- Module Supervisor: Nadine Rossol