Police practices

Police work is made up of multiple tasks and demands: it is by nature a multifaceted and unpredictable, reality. Fundamentally, what the police do, it is to adapt to the circumstances within the framework of missions defined by law. In reality, these multiple police tasks reflect the complexity and historical character of social practices. Police intervention in its nature and modalities must control various parameters: the professional cultures of field police officers, their means, the demands and reactions of the various strata of the "population", injunctions from body officials or politicians, without forgetting the media pressure. The police are constrained by this balance, sometimes paradoxical, which evolves in time and space.

Police activity is largely made up of daily tasks, routine and administrative, negotiated according to the needs of the authorities and the population. The interactions of the police with the populations determine to a very large extent "what the police do": namely the missions, police functions (police, crime suppression, sovereignty police) and how to exercise them. As the expectations and demands of the “population” are numerous and often ambiguous, these functions are multiple. Citizens turn to the police in a variety of circumstances and for a variety of problems (often conflicts), because she embodies the authority, because she can use force, because it is a gateway to the legal world. But the forms of police action are also determined by the places where the police work., that is to say by geographic structures, demographic, socioeconomic territory. They are also dependent on the socio-political context, tant local qu’international. Finally, they depend on what the police think is expected of them - or how they view their assignments, in view of their professional identity. Finally, it is a portfolio of tasks characterized by the selection and prioritization that emerges, Especially since the number and time of the police are by definition limited resources.

It should be borne in mind that the action of the police is above all a practice before being theorizable knowledge, a model fixed once and for all. Therefore, "Stuffing" police officers' heads with role models is not the best strategy to change police action. Used alone, this strategy is doomed to failure. Likewise, to think of police action in terms only of tools or technologies made available to officers is just as insufficient. It is a strategy that forgets the knot of relationships and representations that actually guide police choices.

The legitimacy of police intervention is a central notion in any reflection on police missions and practices. The contribution of confidence or mistrust between the police and the population largely depends on a complex negotiation between a plurality of regulatory actors. The order thus negotiated is fragile and unstable.

While the reality of police work is far from being limited to fighting crime and ensuring safety, however, the police have always tended to favor these tasks. This is what people expect of them and this is how they think to be able to build their legitimacy.