Policewomen in the United States

Abstract

Strategy is as important in the internal battle of society against its non-conformists as it is in the wars between nations, and the social agency which holds a strategic position against the criminal class has the potential strength of the Greeks at Thermopylae. The police power has inherited this vantage spot from the remote days when private property emerged and demanded protection; when primitive man first realized the blessings of a public peace and demanded its preservation; and when crime was declared a common enemy and its prevention a necessity. These functions are broad and they have not been hampered by exact definitions. As they have been developed in modern police practice, both rural and urban, they place the officers at the narrow pass through which the tide of inebriates, mental defectives, unemployed and socially unadjusted are surging on to the prisons, the insane asylums and poor farms. Collectively speaking, the police department views the social life of its people as completely as an aerial photograph pictures its buildings. Every hour of the twenty-four its officers pass the homes of the citizens, investigate disturbances, visit its public gathering places, arrest the criminal of today and advise or warn the criminal of tomorrow. Many of these problems are rooted in social and personal difficulties which need the adjustment of the trained social worker. The proper diagnosis, advice based on scientific knowledge, or reference to a social agency for protection at a crucial moment may mean the difference between the sunlight of freedom or the shadow of high walls. No other agency comes so close to the individual when he is in trouble or in danger. No other position is so universally strategic.