Académique Documents
Professionnel Documents
Culture Documents
FRENCH STYLE
by M.J. KING LL.M.
the causes of crime revealed to the Commission was the urgent need
for state action within a framework of decentralisation (page 31).
The problem with previous anti-crime policies, according to the
Committee of Mayors, was their piecemeal nature, the lack of co
ordinated action and general ignorance among the centralised
administrative bureaucracy as to the real causes of crime. These
failures were not helped by local governments dependency on this
same Paris bureaucracy for funding, the effect of which was to stifle
virtually all local initiatives. (2)
The Committees solution was to create the structures that would
encourage two forms of partnership, the first between local and
central Government and the second between these two
administrations and groups at the local community level responsible
for putting schemes into effect.
The originality of the Bonnemaison approach lay in the way in
which it deliberately turned its back on solutions which saw crime
and criminals as distinct and separate from the problems that beset
society in general and life in the large cities in particular. Instead, it
placed prevention and anti-crime policies firmly in the context of
more general social issues related to illiteracy and school failure, the
relief of unemployment among the young, racial discrimination and
the improvement of the urban environment and the general quality of
peoples lives.
If we now jump ahead eight years and see how these original
proposals have been translated into action through the Crime
Prevention Contracts (Contrats dfaction de prevention: CAPs), we
find that these fall into eight main headings:
1. General prevention programmes: including supportive
teaching to prevent school failure, measures against illiteracy,
educational help for those who have left school, computer
workshops, giving people a sense of citizenship and the
creation of young peoples town councils.
2. Social and vocational integration: specialised prevention, help
in job seeking, vocational training, work experience schemes,
businesses run with the help of public funding.
3. Stimulation of leisure and cultural activities to enliven towns
and cities: summer projects, sports facilities, providing meeting
places, holding festivals, fetes (fun days) and sporting events,
communication projects.
4. Housing and city life: housing help for young people,
emergency accommodation, tenants and owners management and
maintenance associations, social facilities, roads and access
DECEMBER, 1989
Le conseil national
de prevention de la delinquance
Figure 2
Figure 1
At the central Government level, there is the Conseil National de
Prevention de la Dilinquance (CNDP), presided over by the Prime
Minister or a minister delegated by him. The CNDP includes among
its members, mayors, members of Parliament, representatives from
DECEMBER, 1989
Page Five
A TITRE CONSULTATIF
Figure 3
Representants dissociations
Personalities qualifiees
Juge dapplication des peines
Juge des enfants
Avocats
DECEMBER, 1989
Page Seven
/ >5
DECEMBER, 1989
directions. The police saw their task as one of control through the
traditional methods of arrest and prosecution, while social workers
were occupied with helping young people and their families to cope
with a multitude of problems resulting from deprivation and
increasing insecurity and instability in their social environment. For
social workers, insensitive and seemingly unnecessary police action
merely added to the difficulties encountered by these young people
and their families.
The Bonnemaison Report, perhaps idealistically, saw prevention
and repression as two sides of the same coin, two totally compatible
concepts, both equally necessary in the fight against crime. A shift
in both police and social work practice, due in part to the emergence
of new crime prevention policies, has facilitated a reproachment
between the respective positions of these two professional groups.
Social workers now place less emphasis on helping clients on an
individual or family basis and direct their efforts more to involving
people, both young and old in community activities. The police
have now recognised that prosecuting young offenders is rarely a
solution to anti-social adolescent behaviour, much of which can be
traced to boredom and the lack of opportunity for self-fulfilment.
This does not mean that their different approaches to crime in
general has changed, but rather that the ground for conflict has
shifted from petty-crime to more serious matters, such as drug
dealing and organised burglary.
While police and other workers involved in crime prevention,
like the politicians of left and right, have reached a consensus on
the need for preventative rather than repressive action as a response
for most juvenile crime, there are still wide variations from area to
area as to the way in which the prevention/repression partnership
operates in practice. At one end of the spectrum is Clichy where
policy disagreements between the Mayor and the Commissioner of
Police have resulted in an absence of co-operation between
prevention workers and the police. At a luncheon put on by the
Mayor for all those working in the ete-jeunes programme the police
were conspicuous by their absence.
At the other end of the spectrum, at Epinay-sur-Seine, where
Gilbert Bonnemaison is the Mayor, police officers actually help to
operate the ite-jeunes programme, both at the organisational level
and in running courses on caving. In other areas, such as Lille, the
police role is often to take a low profile where juvenile crime is
concerned, while playing an active part on the CCPD. Here, as in
many places, the police have benefited materially from grants for
equipment such as computers for crime-monitoring and closedcircuit surveillance cameras.
At Poissy, the Director of Crime Prevention made it very clear
that in his view policemen and social workers should not work
together because of the temptation for the police to ask for
information.
Once young people know that their social workers are in
cahoots with the police, they stop trusting them.
Any passing on of information to the police has therefore to take
place at the highest level. The Director has no direct contact with
young people and so risks nothing by having a close relationship
with the towns Police Commissioner. Even so, the information
given is of a general nature; clients are not betrayed:
I inform the police, for example, of new kinds of drug-addiction
or when a new gang of dealers appears on the scene. Its up to
the police to carry out its repressive work. We dont get
involved.
This high level exchange operates both ways:
If the police arrest someone selling drugs or breaking into a car
and its someone that we know and are trying to help, in the
knowledge that prison is not the answer for that kind of kid, the
police will often agree to drop any prosecution.
What happens at Poissy, and doubtless elsewhere, is that the
CCPD, and more particularly the administrators of the crime
Page Nine
From its inception the National Council (CNPD) has made funds
available to cities and towns to enable new, experimental schemes
to get off the ground. These funds are not intended as a substitute
for local financing or to supplement the general funds available for
crime prevention in an area. Rather, they are offered very much
within the concept of partnership. Local funding must be available.
The project must have received prior approval of the communale or
departementale Crime Prevention Council and submissions must be
accompanied by an analysis of the local crime problem. In 1987 a
total of 210 contracts were accepted by the National Council. Here
are some examples of innovatory projects which have been realised
with the help of CNPD funding.
A. School Safety: Lille
DECEMBER, 1989
Page Eleven
Page Twelve
L A
T R A T T O R IA
FULLY LICENSED
AIR CONDITIONED
GOOD SELECTION
OF WINES
ITALIAN RESTAURANT
DECEMBER, 1989
A ll C r im e
1982
FIGURE 4
1983
1984
1985
1986
Year
FIGURE 5
< 50,000
50,000 -100,000
> 100,000
Size of District
D istricts W ith CCPD
W ithout CCPD
Figure 6
-1
-2
-3 4
-4-5 -6 -7
< 50,000
50,000- 100,000
> 1 0 0 ,0 0 0
S ize o f D is tric t
| D istrict sv iff CCPD
W ithout CCPD
Page Fourteen
A US C 4E PREVENTION COUNCIL
DECEMBER, 1989
Felonies
of which:
armed robery
robbery with violence
drug trafficking
Misdemeanours
of which:
burglary
assault & battery
rape
Delinquency
of which:
car thefts
mugging
vandalism
1982
1981-1982
%
1983
1982-1983
%
1984
1983-1984
%
1985
1984-1985
%
1986
1985-6
%
49,466
+11.36
56,272
+13.76
63,744
+13.28
65,861
+3.32
62,008
-5.85
5,535
40,540
1,001
499,802
+2.35
+13.66
+20.46
+18.24
6,139
44,735
2,735
536,084
+10.91
+10-.35
+173.23
+7.26
7,661
50,246
3,275
582,142
+24.79
+12.32
+19.74
+8.59
8,909
50,233
4,046
581,314
+16.29
-0.03
+23.54
-0.14
8,001
42,739
8,326
555,052
-10.19
-14.92
+105.78
-4.52
365,184
38,774
2,459
2,864,414
+21.15
+11.13
+13.47
+18.22
392,092
39,251
2,803
2,971,619
+7.37
+1.23
+13.99
+3.74
436,435
38,389
2,859
3,035,567
+11.31
-2.20
+2.00
+2.15
433,145
39,336
2,823
:>,932,019
-0.75
+2.47
-1.26
-3.41
401,970
36,549
2,937
2,675,129
-7.20
-7.09
+4.04
-8.76
259,646
627,944
225,175
+12.49
+25.15
+28.54
252,846
660.302
217,543
-2.62
+5.15
-3.39
265,030
720,360
225,366
+4.82
+9.10
+3.60
283,743
721,028
217,228
+7.06
+0.09
-3.61
261,013
652,488
201,020
-8.01
-9.51
-7.46
justice process.
A widely applied policy of giving young people responsibility in
order for them to develop a sense of achievement and a positive
self-image. This was most in evidence in the encouragement to
the young unemployed to propose a project, and the willingness
of Crime Prevention Councils to back recommended projects
with funding and expertise. It was also present in many of the
summer programmes where equipment and experienced help
was provided, but it was up to the young people themselves to
decide how to use these facilities.
Taking an analytical approach to crime prevention. Simple
solutions to problems of youth crime, such as the use of
custodial measures or exhortations directed at schoolteachers or
parents find little favour among French politicians today. Rather,
the complexity of the causes of youth crime is generally
recognised, as is the need to base preventive action on careful
analysis of these causes within specific geographical localities.
NOTES
1. For a summary of the Bonnemaison Report see H-F Mechdri,
1986, Privenir la delinquance :laffaire de tous Logiques
Sociales, LHarmattan, Paris, ch. 1.
2. See Peyre, V., 1986, Une nouvelle politique de prevention en
France, 1983-1985 Annales de Vaucresson, no. 24 p. 73
3. Interview with M. Pierre Bertrand, Deputy Mayor of Lille,
18th May 1987
4. G. Bonnemaison, 1987, La sicurite en libertis Syros, Paris
5. See M. King and M-A. Petit, 1985 thin stick and fat carro t
the French Juvenile Justice System 15 Youth & Policy 2631.
6. See F. Portet, 1986, Medias, defis urgences in Dubet et.al
Les operations et-jeunes Centre Technique National
detudes et de recherche, Vanves, p. 168 note 10.
7. Information published by the Conseil Nationale de Prevention
de la Delinquance, Paris, 1988.
8. F. Portet op.cit. note 11. p. 174.
9. F. Portet op.cit. p. 174.
10. D. Duprex, Les politiques dordre de la cite C.L.E.R.S.E. Lille
11. H-F Mecheri, 1986, Prevenir la delinquance: Vaffaire de tous
Logiques Sociales, LHarmattan, Paris, note 4 p. 94.
12. M. King, The Politics of Crime Prevention accepted for
publication by the Howard Journal. See also King, M. The
Politics of Crime , seminar paper given to conference, Crime
Inevitable or Preventable? Melbourne 3-6 July, 1989.
Page Fifteen