ABSTRACT
Among Western democracies, France represents the most extreme pole of intense political and administrative centralization, and the nation’s police forces are no exception in that regard. Throughout the nation, public safety is in the hands of central government, the responsibility of the president of the Republic and the minister of the interior. Voters look to them to guarantee their security. This organizational design raises questions. There are advantages to a centralized, pyramidal structure. Terrorism, cybercrime, transnational economic and financial crime, and global drug networks seem to justify strengthening central coordination. However, organizational and political centralization has negative features as well. The police are a fundamental tool for implementing policy, and as such a national mixture of politics and personalities plays itself out in local enforcement practices. For example, the system systematically favors repression over proactive crime prevention, and it forestalls closing the gap between police and the public, especially in disadvantaged and immigrant communities. Moreover, centralization trends to be irreversible: whenever a new challenge or problem arises, politicians and police chiefs always react by centralizing more. In this system, there is no room for local innovation or adaptation to specific demands. Police forces have become a tool in governments’ hands to control the population, and less and less a public service.
