NCJ Number
80364
Journal
International Journal of the Sociology of Law Volume: 9 Issue: 4 Dated: (November 1981) Pages: 361-382
Date Published
1981
Length
22 pages
Annotation
The historic identity and rationale for police operations in France are traced through an application and mingling of the concepts of legal science and political science.
Abstract
A scientific study of the police in France has been rare, largely because the police function has fallen through the cracks existing between (1) legal science, which tends to view the police technically and idealistically rather than scientifically; (2) political science, which seems not to have appreciated that the police are related to the exercise of political power and administration; and (3) administrative science, which has focused on everything related to State economic interventionism without considering the State's repressive dimension. This essay examines the nature of the French police through an historical analysis of the political, legal, and administrative forces of France. The principal hypothesis is that the police have originated from the army and that they constitute a 'Law army,' which has the specific function of seeing that the social order and individual behavior conforms to that defined in law. Specific issues examined are the role of repression by the state, the relationship between repression and ideology in the liberal state and particularly the French State, the meaning of the current yoking of the police function with the ideology of security in France and its likely consequences, and the implications of current changes in the French State for the future of social control in that country. Notes and 29 references are provided.