ABSTRACT
This chapter outlines the legal framework within which covert policing takes place and uses both secondary literature and some preliminary findings from an empirical study of French defence lawyers to indicate something of contemporary practice. In the context of inquiries lead by investigating magistrates, the requirement that all investigative acts, which includes covert policing acts, be ordered by the juge d’instruction in the form of a commission rogatoire provides a judicial control. The system lacks detailed administrative guidelines for the use of covert policing or a general legal framework for it. The difference is in the regulatory framework: it is administrative law which regulates the actions of the police in the domain of public order: criminal procedure only regulates police in the investigative sphere. The use of informers followed by telephone taps was regarded as almost routine in drugs cases by several criminal specialists.
