Interpol

Interpol is an international organization that facilitates worldwide police cooperation and crime control. It has seven regional bureaus worldwide and a National Central Bureau in all 194 member states, making it the world’s largest police organization. Its broad mandate covers virtually every kind of crime, including crimes against humanity, child pornography, drug trafficking and production.

About Interpol in brief

Summary InterpolInterpol is an international organization that facilitates worldwide police cooperation and crime control. It has seven regional bureaus worldwide and a National Central Bureau in all 194 member states, making it the world’s largest police organization. Its broad mandate covers virtually every kind of crime, including crimes against humanity, child pornography, drug trafficking and production, political corruption, copyright infringement, and white-collar crime. It is governed by a General Assembly, composed of all member countries, which elects the Executive Committee and the President to supervise the implementation of INTERPOL’s policies and administration. Day-to-day operations are carried out by the General Secretariat, comprising around 1,000 personnel from over 100 countries, including both police and civilians. The agency operates in four languages: Arabic, English, French, and Spanish. Contrary to popular belief, INTERPOL is itself not a law enforcement agency. It seeks to remain politically neutral in fulfilling its mandate, as it is barred from interventions or activities of a political, military, religious, or racial nature or involving itself in disputes over such matters. INTERPOL has an annual budget of around €113 million, most of which comes from annual contributions by member police forces in 181 countries. It was founded in 1923 as the International Criminal Police Commission, adopting many of its current duties throughout the 1930s. After coming under Nazi control in 1938, the agency was effectively moribund until after the Second World War. The United States did not join until 1938, although a U.S. police officer unofficially attended the 1923 congress. The same notices were first published in the ICPC’s International Public Safety Journal, which was published in Yugoslavia, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Romania, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom.

Most member states withdrew their support during this period from 1938 to 1945, although the presidents of the Viennese-based ICPC included Otto Steinhäusl, Reinhard Heydluss, and An Anschluss. The ICPC fell under the control of the Nazi regime in 1938 and its headquarters were eventually moved to Berlin in 1942. The earliest attempt at a formal, permanent framework for international police coordination was the Police Union of German States, formed in 1851 to bring together police from various German-speaking states. A similar plan was launched by Italy in the 1898 Anti-Anarchist Conference of Rome, which brought delegates from 21 European countries to create a formal structure for addressing the international anarchist movement. The early 20th century saw several more efforts to formalize international police cooperation, as growing international travel and commerce facilitated transnational criminal enterprises and fugitives of the law. In 1914, a conference in Monaco brought police and legal officials from two dozen countries to discuss international cooperation in investigating crimes, sharing investigative techniques, and extradition procedures. The Monaco Congress laid out twelve principles and priorities that would eventually become foundational to INTERPOL, including providing direct contact between police in different nations; creating an international standard for forensics and data collection; and facilitating the efficient processing of extradition requests.