Crime and Policing in Wartime

War affects combatant societies, and societies trampled over by warring armies and smashed by their munitions, in a variety of ways. This chapter draws out some of these effects with respect to crime and criminal offending in European societies since the mid-eighteenth century, and explores how that offending was investigated and suppressed. It focusses on three principal areas: first, the kinds of, and extent of offences committed by soldiers and sailors during war and its immediate aftermath; second, the ways in which the exigencies and pressures of, and the opportunities provided by war have prompted criminal activity among civilians; and third, the kinds of police that existed and that were specifically developed to deal with military offending