History of Interpol - The Long Search for Criminals Across Borders #1006214

HISTORY OF INTERPOL
The Long Search for Criminals Across Borders

A criminal crosses a border. The evidence stays behind. The name changes. The trail disappears.

For more than a century, international police cooperation has tried to solve that problem.

History of INTERPOL follows the extraordinary evolution of the organization now known as INTERPOL—from the early twentieth-century dream of international criminal cooperation to a worldwide system for exchanging police information across borders.
The story begins in 1914, when police officials and legal experts from 24 countries gathered in Monaco to discuss international cooperation, identification techniques, and extradition. World War I interrupted the project, but the idea returned in Vienna in 1923, when representatives from 20 countries established the International Criminal Police Commission, the predecessor of modern INTERPOL.

From there, the organization developed new ways to connect national police forces. Central points of contact emerged. International communications expanded. Fingerprints and criminal records became increasingly important. In 1935, an international radio network was introduced for criminal police authorities. After the upheaval of World War II, the organization was rebuilt, and the name "INTERPOL" became its telegraphic address in 1946.
Then came the Red Notice, international databases, secure communications, fingerprint identification, DNA information, and increasingly sophisticated systems for sharing information about wanted persons and criminal activity. The organization's modern constitutional framework was adopted in 1956.

But the history is not simply a story of technology and expanding police cooperation. It is also a story of war, political upheaval, sovereignty, competing legal systems, changing definitions of crime, and the difficult question of how police forces from different countries can cooperate while remaining within their respective laws.

This book explores the people, institutions, technologies, controversies, and historical turning points behind the world's best-known international police organization.

From fingerprints to digital databases, from fugitives crossing borders to investigators chasing information across continents, this is the long history of the search for criminals in a world where crime learned to travel.