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Women Police in Weimar: Professionalism, Politics, and Innovation in Police Organizations

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2024

Erika S. Fairchild
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Abstract

This article details the history and philosophy behind attempted major changes in police tradition and organization that were fostered by women between 1920 and 1931 in Germany. Women police, led by Josefine Erkens and influenced by their background as social workers, tried to develop a social-work–oriented policing. Erkens held successive leadership positions in Cologne, Frankfurt, and Hamburg. With each new position she pioneered ways of thinking about the role of women in police work and about the relation between social work as a profession and policing as a profession. She became a controversial figure and was finally dismissed from her position in Hamburg. The case examined in this paper shows the influence on police of gender role uncertainty, interest group pressures, the political environment, and conflicting views of police professionalism. The article also discusses the difficulties involved in trying to integrate within one organization two disparate professional paradigms: that of law enforcement, with its emphasis on deterrence, and that of social work, with its emphasis on rehabilitation.

Type
Research Article
Information
Law & Society Review , Volume 21 , Issue 3 , 1987 , pp. 375 - 402
Copyright
Copyright © 1987 The Law and Society Association.

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Footnotes

The author wishes to thank the personnel of the Hauptstaatsarchiv Stuttgart, the Wuerttembergische Landesbibliothek, the Institute of Criminology of the University of Tuebingen, and the Geschichtliche Sammlung of the Polizeifuehrungsakademie Muenster for their help in her research. All translations are the author's.

References

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