Policing Prostitution in Wartime America: Federal Law Enforcement Manual with Earlier Police Training and Professional Literature, 1900 to 1945

National Advisory Police Committee

Pamphlet

American police archive from 1900 to 1945 centered on the policing of prostitution and the wartime treatment of venereal disease, sexual behavior, and adolescent girls as matters of law enforcement. Techniques of Law Enforcement Against Prostitution directs officers in the surveillance, arrest, and medical handling of women suspected of prostitution, extending police work into taverns, hotels, tourist camps, curfew enforcement, and cooperation with military and health authorities. Two earlier pieces establish the professional setting in which such work developed: a turn of the century examination tests officers on vagrancy, “public nuisance,” liquor regulation, warrants, fires, injured persons, and entry into houses, while the December 1931 Police Journal addresses criminology, heredity and environment, traffic control, and foreign police systems.
Group of three printed police training and professional materials, 1900 to 1945:

[1] General Knowledge of Duties, Examinations for Policemen. [San Francisco], reproducing examinations dated October 3, 1900, July 17, 1902, and January 30, 1904. The examination defines competent police work broadly, as candidates are asked “What efforts should a policeman make to prevent crime on his beat?,” how to handle injured or sick persons in the street, the regulations governing policemen at fires, the legal definitions of misdemeanor, felony, vagrancy, assault, battery, murder, and manslaughter, and others subjects.

[2] Burns, R. Vernon, ed. The Police Journal: A Monthly Review of Police Progress, Problems and Activities. New York: The Police Journal Publishing Company, December 1931. Vol. XVIII, No. 10. The magazine identifies itself as “The Professional Magazine of the Police of the Nation” and the “Official Organ of the National Commission on Police Welfare.” Its contributors and associate editors include criminologists, physicians, and identification specialists

3] National Advisory Police Committee to the Federal Security Administrator. Techniques of Law Enforcement Against Prostitution: A Manual for the Guidance of Enforcement Officers in Proceeding Against Prostitutes and Procurers. Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1945 revised issue, retaining 1943 on the title page. Compiled under the Federal Security Agency, Office of Community War Services, Division of Social Protection, and approved by the National Sheriffs’ Association, the International Association of Chiefs of Police, and the Interdepartmental Committee on Venereal Disease Control of the Army, Navy, and Federal Security Agency. The preliminary matter states, “This manual is addressed to law enforcement officers. It is not for general distribution.” Its contents proceed from “Crime or Disease” and “Why Repress and Suppress Prostitution” through “The Streetwalker,” “The ‘Call Flat,’” “The Call Girl,” “Spot Maps,” “Patrolling,” taverns and bars, hotels, tourist and trailer camps, taxicabs, vice squads, “The ‘Teen Age’ Girl,” curfew, the Social Protection Division, the United States Public Health Service, and the Military Police.
The earliest material defines police duty through crime prevention, nuisance and vagrancy enforcement, emergency response, alcohol regulation, warrants, and political conduct. By 1931, professional police literature incorporated criminology, traffic engineering, hereditary theories of criminality, departmental comparison, and foreign police systems; Dosi’s article brought contemporary Fascist policing directly into an American police journal while Mussolini’s regime promoted centralized authority as a model of order. The federal prostitution manual shows these broader claims to police expertise applied to wartime sexual regulation. One passage records 264 women arrested in four months: 91 were found infected with venereal disease and 43 had been apprehended with men in uniform; the women were classified as 213 white, 33 “colored,” and 18 “Indians,” while all but two servicemen were released to military police rather than taken to court. “The ‘Teen Age’ Girl” identifies broken homes, employed mothers, early employment, servicemen husbands, inadequate recreation, and “delinquent” parents as police concerns, while the curfew section addresses legal authority over adolescent nighttime activity. Later scholarship has used the term carceral feminism for some alliances among women’s activism, welfare work, policing, and punitive state power; these materials use the contemporary vocabularies of police welfare, criminology, social hygiene, social protection, and prostitution suppression. Examination sheet folded with pronounced horizontal creases, light toning, and scattered stains; Police Journal with moderate cover wear and toning; federal manual with wrapper soiling, edge wear, creasing, and corner losses, contents sound and legible. Overall good condition. A record of prostitution enforcement within a police system increasingly concerned with disease control, sexual behavior, juvenile supervision, and professional authority.

Item #23949

Price: $550.00