Ever since the western advent of modern policing in the mid-1800s, government and civilian agencies alike have attempted to reform security services and to deradicalize police officers with the hope to produce fair and impartial civil servants and hence build public trust. This essay surveys international efforts to combat extremism in law enforcement in recent history. The intention is to situate the problem in its proper global and historical context and to highlight strategies that might be adapted for effective usage in the United States today.

This article critically reexamines denazification narratives, arguing that the ubiquitous use of questionnaires to determine culpability unintentionally, if predictably, created a giant mechanism for renarrating individual lives in ways that emphasized one’s innocence. It illuminates the workings of innocence as a strategy of remembrance.

This comparative study challenges longstanding assumptions about the nature of French military government by accessing newly declassified archival materials. It shows that French denazification programs were decentralized and malleable, and also that the screening bureaucracy was striking similar to those of the other Allied nations.