| HISTORY OF THE FONT IN FRANCE
The font is, , art to control the city. Today, the term recovers two concepts which have between them close connections: the whole of the regulations imposed to the citizens with a view the backup of the law and order; the whole of the services charged to make comply with these regulations.
The function of font is that to assume the internal security. She is exerted thus on two levels. On an interindividual level, it will be a question of the regulation of the local disputes, which can be related to degraded relations of vicinity, matrimonial law business, disturbances of the public life (circulation in particular) and, especially, with phenomena which the criminologists name “deviance” and which the lawyers lock up for their part in the expression of “breach of security of the people and the goods”: murder, flights, destruction, etc When the disagreements relate to groups, one speaks then about social conflicts: those lead sometimes to situations of riots, insurrections, revolutions.
The font answers a function of command which exists insofar as the nationals of the same territory produce disorder. It with the responsibility of make adhere to “public peace”, i.e. to ensure “the conformity of the conduits the established standards, to back up between the members of a given community the common denominator necessary for the cohesion and the operation of this community”.
The share of the font thus consists of sanctions which go from the right of monitoring for the use of the force, sanctions intended to repress the violation of the standards (written rules, uses, limits left with the appreciation) which govern the legitimate or legal operation of a community. The stresses posed by the existence of social and political violences inside a society made up are well of all times. On the other hand, if the function of font is universal, it does not return to practices and identical structures.
History of the font the history of the font, in differentiated society, is that of the slow passage of a militia to a body of officials. In Greece, one delegated the task to arbitrate the individual quarrels with a body of Scythian slaves. In Rome, it was in Gallic slaves that the same role was reserved; as for collective violences, it was with the formed armies Roman citizens that it returned to repress them - thus insurrections of slaves.
The police force does not distinguish, consequently, the private and public aspects. The slaves one . This patrimonial aspect is found even more distinctly during Average Ge. The internal security is then the privilege of those which have the right to fight: knights, gathered around a feudal lord. Owner of the grounds, this last is also responsible for a law and order which merges with its private command of lord of the manor. He is assisted in the north of France by a provost, and in the South by a or a . Starting from century, the cities try to be released from the domination of the lord; the middle-class men undertake to protect themselves while raising a , a company of , or by calling upon mercenaries. When a country rising or a revolt of craftsmen bursts, in fact the armies or royal come to the rescue from the commercial minorities.
The first bureaucratic innovation, within the meaning of max Weber, was the constitution, in 1536, of the body of the constabulary. With their “official reports”, the ancestors of the gendarmerie have the exorbitant capacity to judge “at once” - in the literal sense - the criminals of “main road”. The first officialized font of public safety was born. Between century and the Revolution, the institution organizes itself little by little and ends up squaring the territory by disseminating brigades of five men on all the axes of circulation. In parallel, the central administration approaches a turning: creation in 1667 of the function of lieutenant of font of Paris, whose mission consists in “ensuring the rest of the public and the private individuals, to purge the town of what can cause the disorders”, introduced the first differentiation between the font and justice. The police superintendents will not be long in appearing. The word “font” indicates from now on an institution related on the development and the consolidation of the political power in Western society. The Treaty of font of Nicolas of the Pond, appeared in 1722, mentions twelve fields of intervention, which gather in fact the whole of the share of the State: “the religion, morality, health, provisionings, routes and the Highways Departments, public buildings, public safety, liberal arts, trade, factories, servants, the poor”. A formula summarizes well the nature of this situation: “Before the font does not take an administrative form, it is the administration which is police.”
With the , a “police force” intended to ensure the protection of the people and goods are set up. The gendarmerie is born in 1791 from the reorganization from the constabulary. The Code of brumaire year IV retains a restrictive definition of the font: “The font is instituted to maintain the law and order, freedom, the property, individual safety.” The law of the 12 year VIII distinguishes the general font (passports, begging, assemblies, worships) from the municipal police (small roadway system, healthiness, fires). In other words, the Napoleonean font is dissociated from the official shares which do not return expressly to a police managing staff and activities of the local police, which are spring of the simple administrative management of the urban businesses. A given whole of fields emerges which recovers problems of law and order directly. And these fields concern the new specialized personnel of the font, which will take care some either in a direction of social control (prevention), or in a coercive direction (repression).
If a military font dependant on the central authorities is constituted with the gendarmerie, other formations of font endure at the century. The middle-class militia, whose last alternative was the National guard, created in 1789, are prolonged until 1872. The political power gives up the militia then: in their bosom too frequent mutinies on behalf of the “popular” sections had appeared more. As for the municipalities, they will preserve a relative range under the authority of the mayor, while delegating the function of font to “police officers” recruited locally. Paris knows a particular status. A body of “policemen”, 7.000, is set up under the Second Empire: they will become with the advent of the parliamentary democracy in the last quarter of the century. They will count 25 039 men then, that the prefect of police (in post of 1893 to 1913) will try to popularize in their distributing the #FFFFFF stick of circulation and by creating the brigades cyclists and river. Before 1940, the font of State is thus still weak, since the members of the police force are recruited and paid by the communes and the departments. Even the police superintendent remains under the supervision of an owner who is not other than the mayor. But, after Lyon (1851), Marseilles (1908), Toulon and (1918), a nationalization of vast span attaches the majority of the communal fonts of the Paris suburbs to the statute of official of State. It is necessary to await a law of 1941 however so that the municipal police is nationalized and passes under the direct authority of the home secretary.
 Municipal police officers with bicycle about 1910
The history of the font primarily clarifies the rise of a font of public safety. In the campaigns or the cities, it is a question of preventing and of repressing the aggressions on the people, the flights, the quarrels, the problems of circulation. The gendarmerie as the municipal police will be harnessed thus with the heavy task of this diffuse social control: famous “the rounds” of the gendarmes in the canton are the most remarkable illustration. What does not prevent the sudden appearance of brawls, even of crimes imposing the recourse to repression.
Police structures and political regimes the functions of font change radically according to whether one is in the presence of a dictatorial regime or of a democratic regime. In the democratic States, the font is submitted to the right, itself resulting from the popular will. The share of the font is thus at the same time legitimate and legal. On the other hand, she knows two organisational alternatives: that is to say a pyramidal configuration, within which the centralism functions with blows of authoritative and political decisions (famous France this model: the State Jacobin has a font which will not cease tending towards the statute of font of State, body of agents officials on which the career depends directly on a bureaucracy controlled by the political personnel); that is to say a structure where coexist a multiplicity of police entities superimposed (the United States and Great Britain represent the paradigmatic cases of this tangle of local police and central fonts). Generally, the great legal affairs and the major problems of law and order are competence of the federal police, while the multiple aspects of urban management are fully assumed by the municipalities, the counties and the districts.
In all the cases of figure, the staff training of the fonts of the democratic society is crucial. One teaches with the new volunteer not only one trade, a way of doing, which understands the knowledge of the right and handling of the techniques, but, above all, an ethics. The suspect is a citizen, the demonstrator a “citizen temporarily stray”. This deontology learns in contact with the old ones. But the educational level also increases him, related to the overall movement of prolongation of the cultural formation. The share of the font, is indeed forwarded to power struggles: it is insofar as the press cannot be muzzled by the font which the latter fears the scandals and, so puts itself in prospect; it is as because of separation of the capacities and the division of the labor as the various elements of the repressive puzzle balance the ones the others. If there is not really a war of the fonts, there exists an interdependence between the justice and the font, but also between the font of State and the gendarmerie, between CRS and the anti-riot police, between the and the RAID, the judicial police and the brigades special (commando). The police command is thus the resultant of a system of reciprocal pressures.
In totalitarian society, the State is known as police officer insofar as the political power owes its existence with special organizations and, in particular, with an political police completely interdependent of the regime in place ( under , under the regime tsarist, then in the USSR). What distinguishes the totalitarian States of the democracies lies thus in the absolute power of the management of the font, which appears as well on the population as on the government officials. The concentration of the police capacity between the same hands on behalf of a purely technical splitting of repressive work ends in a regime of command which wants to be absolute. Consequently, all the means are good: raids or removals (of night like day), tortures, economic relegation, deportation of the family members, incarceration with life under conditions which “shorten” the sorrow… The daily fear echoes the disappearance of all legal “hedging”. (See A. , the Gulag Archipelago.)
By contrast, the democratic fonts, which operate under control of justice, are maintained in a universe of rules by elected officials who fear the verdict of the ballot boxes and, more basically, in a tradition of natural rights and public freedoms.
Command and font the agents specialized in the functions of resequencing fit in a mental universe where the command becomes a cultural data. To be a member of the font, it is to be little by little converted with a representation of the command constitutive of a made reality of permanent confrontations with the “disturbers”, and which supposes discipline and obedience with the chiefs. But the police officers protect the command while also protecting themselves inside a corporation which gathers a myriad of basic communities: the team of patrol of the shift worker, the mobile platoon of gendarmes, the section of judicial police are used as place of sociability vis-a-vis an overall hostile world. The police force, if they do not have to assume the risk of dead with as much of intensity than the soldiers, is not confronted of it daily with social violences than they must manage. With low of a ladder of resistance which makes it possible to measure the reliability of the police officers, to attend an autopsy a rite of passage for the beginners faced for the first time represents at the horror of a shredded body. From where importance of the notations symbolic tending to protect a mental command which makes it possible to hold and not to weaken. The uniform is only one of the symbols of unification, beside the grades, of the strict orders, the rigid organization of the timetable. The command corresponds, in the cultural center of the police officers, with a production of highly functional force, since they must be stronger than the individuals or groups “violent one”. It is at this price that they can satisfy two opposed requirements, whose respect is necessary to the balance of a modern and democratic nation: the hold of the law and order and guarantee of individual freedoms. Whether the plague of the balance leans dangerously towards one or the other: it occurs an unbalance highly prejudicial with the good performance of the State. The police officer has as an essential mission the conservation of this balance, always precarious. Sources (Hatchet Encyclopedia)
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