The Global Sociology Blog

Via Laurent Mucchielli:

Quand M. Hortefeux programme la fin des UTEC de Mme Alliot-Marie – Délinquance, justice et autres questions de société via kwout

Behold the Sarkozy doctrine at work! It plays so much better with the compliant media to speak about taking out the vermin than engaging in long term policies. Never mind that community policing (or “proximity policing” in French), albeit not a panacea, has a better track record than just send Starsky and Hutch wannabes, all guns and sirens blazing. Of course, it also works best and plays well in the media when these hit and run policies are applied against a stigmatized population already perceived as incorrigibly delinquent (and not even really French!).

Policing sociology Christian Mouhanna outlines the stupidity of this antagonistic form of policing in a short paper that traces this freeze on community policing back to 2003 when Sarkozy declared that police officers were not social workers (how ironic considering funcing for local social workers were cut as well) and the security against urban violence (read: against youth of North African ancestry living in housing projects) would be the name of the game.

As Mouhanna notes, in this administration, there are only two types of police: a “cosmetic” one (community policing) and the “real” police, the one that kicks ass and takes names. The cosmetic one takes resources away from “operational” (in Sarkozy language, that means “real”) units. And as Mouhanna states:

This reflects an ideological positioning where police is expected to act against target populations rather than protect them. Control without dialogue. As Mouhanna notes, community policing is not a magic bullet but it is a small step in the direction of sensible policing where policing actually means stable police forces that are trained to reduce tensions and resolve conflicts through  extensive knowledge of the areas and legitimacy and respect from the population. When the population only encounters police forces through raids, mass ID checks and mass arrests for petty offenses, the results in terms of volume of criminality are just not there.

And let me just translate Mouhanna’s last sentence: “It seems that current political leaders prefer to not have police personnel who think too much, but rather who apply more or less realistic and appropriate directives straight from big bosses disconnected from field realities.”

And as mentioned, the media will be more than cooperative in making it look like these policies are actually adapted to a degrading urban reality where the population is a hostile force to be tamed.