Police archives

The history of the police is obviously written from the archives of police institutions, but not only that. The links that the police maintain with all aspects of life in society require that the study be supplemented by other archives which may indirectly evoke the police.When the police did not yet exist as an autonomous institution,, which is the casein many countries to 19th and even 20th siècles, it is necessary to "create" the police archive from the neighbouring series of related institutions .: series of municipal archives, judicial archives, and more. Conversely, police archives are a formidable repository of information for a multitude of non-police historical subjects and have often been used for this purpose.  In either case, thehistorian must be extremely careful, because the police archive is often falsely obvious. It gives the illusion of capturing a reality which is in fact only its truncated, reconstituted version, put into words by the police institution for a very specific purpose. 

Police archives also have the characteristic of not being systematically preserved. Whole sections of police records have been destroyed, either because their content was sensitive, or more often, because no one imagined the value of keeping papers from ordinary practice, often deemed insignificant. As a result, the police archive is often reduced to isolated documents, files missing three-quarters of their content, wreckages of missing series. One must therefore, above all, know the institutional context of their creation, carefully weigh the representativeness of these pieces and question the reasons for their conservation, their loss and their dispersal. By its nature, the police archive can also implicate individuals or families by revealing their privacy or their actions, communication can therefore be difficult and their use requires some precautions.The detour through other archives is therefore often necessary and cross-checking of sources is essential.  

The diversity of police archives is considerable, ranging from texts and images to oral archives and figures.. Certain archives are more specific to police work: minutes of proceedings, reports, files and folders, statements , cases, registers, tables,"memoirs" and others tools available to the user.  The history of these documents provides a great deal of information on the development of police work and constitutes an essential prerequisite for the study of their content.. Beyond the anecdotes, segments of life or events reported by these archives, it is the choices of police attention that are revealed, as well as the development of police tools that appear, as well as their evolution. The police archive never tells the whole story, not even what should be recorded according to the instructions received. Itonly says what the police choose to say, in its often stereotypical way, imbued with specific language uses. The delinquency and crime figures produced by the police, in particular, are more revealing of the choices of police activity than of the reality of criminal activities. Even within police activity, archives only keep what individuals and the institution decide to transcribe. The police archive only says what the police wants it to say, it does notsay anything that the police does not do nor what it does but chooses not to transcribe, in a profession characterized by strong discretionary power.