ABSTRACT
Tougher provisions in the criminal law were the most important prerequisite for the stepping up of actions against homosexual men. At the same time, Himmler's reorganization of the Criminal Police in 1936 was designed to create the administrative base for more efficient legal proceedings. Thus a central police authority was established for the whole German Reich: the Reich Criminal Police Bureau (RKPA), coming out of the Prussian Land Criminal Police Bureau (PLKA). This was reproduced, with some minor differences, by a criminal police headquarters in each of the larger non-Prussian Länder and of the various provinces of Prussia itself. As a rule this simply involved a renaming of the former Land criminal police bureaux. Each of the fourteen newly formed criminal police headquarters took charge of between two and six criminal police authorities, of which there were a total of fifty-five. The area covered by one of these police authorities coincided with a unit of Land government or an equivalent regional administration.
