L’introduction des technologies de surveillance dans le travail policier. Facteur de changement ou de réassurance ?

Data collection and analysis is not a recent phenomenon. However, major changes have occurred in recent decades and surveillance now appears as a general tool in modern institutions. This paper is concerned with analyzing the way surveillance technologies such as CCTV, databases, or crime mapping concretely interact with the State’s traditional monopoly of force in the institutions charged of crime control. The empirical study of two French police services (a transit police department and an inter-institutional detective squad) reveals that these technologies are used by police managers to target high-risk territories and offenders. These case studies tend to refute, in the French context, the hypothesis of surveillance as a symptom of a «softening» of social control. It suggests that the use of surveillance technologies can also help relegitimate traditional means of control at a time the discretion of police officers becomes increasingly discredited