INTERPOL

byname of International Criminal Police Organization, organization that exists to facilitate the cooperation of the criminal police forces of more than 125 countries in their fight against international crime. The aims of the organization are to promote the widest possible mutual assistance between all the criminal police authorities of the affiliated nations within the limits of the laws existing in those countries and to establish and develop all institutions likely to contribute effectively to the prevention and suppression of ordinary crime. A general secretariat headed by a general secretary controls the everyday workings of Interpol. Each affiliated country has a domestic clearinghouse (called the National Central Bureau, or NCB) through which its individual police forces may communicate either with the general secretariat or with the police of other affiliated countries. Television and motion pictures have portrayed Interpol agents as wandering from country to country, making arrests wherever they please; such representations are false, since the nations of the world have varying legal systems and their criminal laws, practices, and procedures differ substantially from one another. No sovereign state would permit any outside body to bypass its police or disregard its laws. The main weapon in the hands of Interpol is not a universal detective; it is the extradition treaty. Interpol's principal target is the international criminal, of which there are three main categories: those who operate in more than one country, such as smugglers, dealing mainly in gold and narcotics and other illicit drugs; criminals who do not travel at all but whose crimes affect other countriesfor example, a counterfeiter of foreign bank notes; and criminals who commit a crime in one country and flee to another. At its headquarters in Lyon, France, Interpol maintains a voluminous record of international criminals and others who may later fall into that category, containing particulars of their identities, aliases, associates, and methods of working, gathered from the police of the affiliated countries. This information is sent over Interpol's telecommunications network or by confidential circular. There are four types of confidential circular. The first type asks that a particular criminal be detained in order that extradition proceedings can be started. The second does not ask for detention but gives full information about the criminal and his methods. The third describes property that may have been smuggled out of the country in which a crime was committed. A fourth deals with unidentified bodies and attempts to discover their identity. Interpol began in Europe, which is not surprising since many countries of Europe have common frontiers and a criminal can, for example, be in one of four other countries within an hour of having committed a crime in Belgium. After World War I there was a great increase in crime; one of the countries most affected was Austria, and the Viennese police president, Johann Schober, obtained his government's support in 1923 for calling together representatives of the criminal police of other countries. The representatives of 20 nations met to discuss the problems facing them, and the International Criminal Police commission was formed that year. Vienna was the home of its first headquarters, and Schober became its first president. From 1923 until 1938 the commission flourished. In 1938 the Nazis seized Austriaand Interpol with it. All of its records were taken to Berlin. The outbreak of World War II brought Interpol's activities to a standstill. After World War II, the French government offered Interpol a headquarters in Paris, together with a staff for the general secretariat consisting of officials of the French police. This offer was gratefully accepted and Interpol was thus revived, although its complete reorganization was necessary, since all its prewar records had been lost or destroyed. Interpol flourished, and by 1955 the number of affiliated countries had increased from 19 in 1946 to 55. A modern and complete constitution for the organization was ratified in 1956, under which its name was changed to the International Criminal Police Organization. The organization continued to progress, and by the mid-1980s the number of affiliated countries had risen to more than 125, representing all the continents of the world.