Women's Impact In Law Enforcement

300 Words2 Pages
Women’s Impact In Law Enforcement In the middle of the nineteenth century the first women hired by the NYPD were called “matrons” (“Women”). In 1854, the first know matrons were hired by New York City to handle female prisoners, but they were civilians with no real authority. In 1893, Sarah Hill became the second matron in Davenport, Iowa. Part of a larger police matron movement in the United States that began in Portland, Maine, in 1878, Matron Hill worked for 27 years to care for female criminals and their children. Police matrons duties varied, but they included sheltering and protecting women and children in custody (“The Beginning”). Women did not achieve full recognition in law enforcement for decades. By the 1970s they still made up