WOMEN POLICE.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVIII, 25 October 1924, Page 7

WOMEN POLICE.

m6bE WANTED "at THE “YARD.” LONDON, Aug. 16. Declaring that women ponce have improved the efficiency ot the force, the departmental committee appointed to consider their employment recommends that more women should be appointed for London, and ther© is the comment: “We are satisfied that women can be usefully employed in the investigation of prime generally.” The committee, which was appointed by Mr. Arthur Henderson (the Home Secretary), suggests that the number of women police appointed should equal the number engaged on such work in 1922. It is interesting to note that the chairman of the committee, Mr. W. C. Bridgeman, was the Home Secretary in 1922, who reduced the personnel of London’s women police from 111 to 20. The total strength in London and the provinces is now 110. On the general question of employment, the committee found considerable diversity of opinion. There was also a difference of opinion among witnesses as to whether women or men were the best for preventive work. They consider that there are crimes, as well as offences of minor gravity, in the investigation of which women, acting either alone or in company with men, have better chances of. success, either because their sex helps to disguise their identity and purpose, or because it secures the confidence of those from whom information is sought “The circumstances of modern life; with its large degrees of freedom from parental control, have increased the number of growing girls brought into contact with temptation. The police temptation by the exercise of some retemptation by lie exercise of some restraining influence. For this women patrols were appointed. 'There is, however,, a financial side to the Question, and it has been suggested that, because trying to save growing girls from temptation is generally described as welfare work, it is definitely outside the scope of legitimate police duty performed at the public expense. We cannot recognise any hard and fast line between welfare work and the policeman’s duty to prevent crime.”