Policemen in Berlin in 1931. Photo: Creative Commons. Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-H29544

Policemen in Berlin in 1931. Photo: Creative Commons. Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-H29544

Peer-reviewed articles Confined within the law Roma in Polish police journals 1920–1939

This article analyzes the Polish police narrative on Roma during the interwar time, unveiling attitudes and potential practices. According to the police journals and handbooks, Roma were mobile and disposed to theft and deceit. Their traditional crafts were merely a smoke screen for illicit activities. As countermeasures, searches of caravans, meticulous checks of identity documents, indiscriminate fingerprinting of Roma suspects, among several measures, were recommended. This narrative constituted part of a larger police professional discourse and is likely to be an indicator of practices on Roma. Polish police followed the contemporary European expertise on Roma produced by the fields of criminalistics and criminology. As there were no discriminatory laws targeting Roma in Poland, it appears that police used legislation against begging and vagrancy, among other tactics.

Published in the printed edition of Baltic Worlds BW 2024: 1-2. pages 21-33
Published on balticworlds.com on April 23, 2024

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abstract

This article analyzes the Polish police narrative on Roma during the interwar time, unveiling attitudes and potential practices. According to the police journals and handbooks, Roma were mobile and disposed to theft and deceit. Their traditional crafts were merely a smoke screen for illicit activities. As countermeasures, searches of caravans, meticulous checks of identity documents, indiscriminate fingerprinting of Roma suspects, among several measures, were recommended. This narrative constituted part of a larger police professional discourse and is likely to be an indicator of practices on Roma. Polish police followed the contemporary European expertise on Roma produced by the fields of criminalistics and criminology. As there were no discriminatory laws targeting Roma in Poland, it appears that police used legislation against begging and vagrancy, among other tactics.
Keywords: Polish history in the interwar period, Polish State Police, Romani history.

Read the full article as a pdf, download OA.

Piotr Wawrzeniuk

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