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Our story began in 1914 when police and lawyers from 24 countries first got together to discuss identification techniques and catching fugitives.
The International Criminal Police Commission was established in September 1923 with headquarters in Vienna. The idea is born. While INTERPOL was officially created in 1923, the idea was born at the first International Criminal Police Congress held in Monaco in April 1914.
The International Criminal Police Commission (ICPC) was established in September 1923 with headquarters in Vienna, Austria. Dr Johannes Schober, President of the Vienna Police, served as President of INTERPOL from its creation until 1932.
In 1946, after the end of World War II, the organization was revived as the International Criminal Police Organization (ICPO) by officials from Belgium, France, Scandinavia, the United States and the United Kingdom. Its new headquarters were established in Paris, then from 1967 in Saint-Cloud, a Parisian suburb.
- Overview
- Organization and functions
- History
Interpol, intergovernmental organization that facilitates cooperation between the criminal police forces of more than 180 countries. Interpol aims to promote the widest-possible mutual assistance between criminal police forces and to establish and develop institutions likely to contribute to the prevention and suppression of international crime. He...
Interpol concentrates on three broad categories of international criminal activity: terrorism and crimes against people and property, including crimes against children, trafficking in human beings, illegal immigration, automobile theft, and art theft; economic, financial, and computer crimes, including banking fraud, money laundering, corruption, and counterfeiting; and illegal drugs and criminal organizations, including organized crime. Interpol’s day-to-day operation is managed by a General Secretariat under the direction of a secretary general, who is appointed for a five-year term by the General Assembly. The General Assembly, consisting of one delegate from each member country, is Interpol’s supreme decision-making body. An Executive Committee of 13 members, each representing a different region of the world, is appointed by the General Assembly at its annual meeting. The Executive Committee oversees the implementation of decisions made by the General Assembly and supervises the work of the secretary general.
Each member country has a domestic clearinghouse—called the National Central Bureau, or NCB—through which its individual police forces may communicate with the General Secretariat or with the police forces of other member countries. Interpol relies on an extensive telecommunications system and a unique database of international police intelligence. Each year, Interpol’s telecommunications staff handles millions of messages in the organization’s four official languages: Arabic, English, French, and Spanish. An automatic search facility, introduced in 1992, allows specially equipped NCBs to search a large database of information; search results are automatically sent in the language of the query. A system known as I-24/7, introduced in 2003, provides NCBs with quick access to a wide variety of data, including fingerprints, DNA records, watch lists of criminal suspects and persons wanted for questioning, and lists of stolen identification documents.
Interpol traces its history to 1914, when a congress of international criminal police, attended by delegates from 14 countries, was held in Monaco. In 1923, following a significant increase in international crime that particularly affected Austria, representatives of the criminal police forces of 20 countries met in Vienna and formed the International Criminal Police Commission (ICPC) that year. The ICPC’s headquarters were established in Vienna, and the head of the Vienna police, Johann Schober, became the organization’s first president. The ICPC flourished until 1938, when Nazi Germany annexed Austria; the ICPC’s records were subsequently relocated to Berlin. The outbreak of World War II effectively ended the ICPC’s activities.
After the war the ICPC accepted an offer from the French government of a headquarters in Paris together with a staff for the General Secretariat consisting of French police officials. The ICPC was thus revived, though the loss or destruction of all its prewar records required that it be completely reorganized. In 1949 the ICPC was granted consultative status by the United Nations. From 1946 to 1955 its membership grew from 19 countries to 55. In 1956 the ICPC ratified a new constitution, under which it was renamed the International Criminal Police Organization (Interpol). The organization moved to its present headquarters in Lyon in 1989.
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Interpol was at first mainly a European organization, drawing only limited support from the United States and other non-European countries (the United States did not join the ICPC until 1938). Under the leadership of French Secretary General Jean Népote (1963–78), Interpol became increasingly effective. By the mid-1980s the number of member countries had risen to more than 125, representing all of the world’s inhabited continents; by the early 21st century membership had surpassed 180.
In the 1970s the organization’s ability to combat terrorism was impeded by Article 3 of its constitution—which forbids “intervention or activities of a political, military, religious or racial character”—and by a 1951 resolution of the General Assembly that defined a “political” crime as that whose circumstances and underlying motives are political, even if the act itself is illegal under criminal law. One source of these obstacles was removed in 1984, when the General Assembly revised the interpretation of Article 3 to permit Interpol to undertake antiterrorist activities in certain well-defined circumstances.
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
Sep 7, 2023 · As the following chart shows, the international police network was founded in September 1923, originally under the name of the International Criminal Police Commission (ICPC), only to be...
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The seeds of Interpol were first planted in 1914, when police forces from all around the world met in Monaco for the first International Criminal Police Congress at the behest of Prince Albert...
