La gouvernance nodale de la sécurité locale

This study proposes an analysis of nodal local security governance measures in France, in a context where the paradigm was developed in highly decentralized Anglo-Saxon countries, but in France resembles more a dialogue between the central and the local than between public and private sectors. The research identifies the characteristics of nodal governance at the heart of local security partnership measures, supported by the Local Security Contract (Conseil Local de Sécurité, CLS), the Council for Local Security and the Prevention of Delinquency (Conseil Local de Sécurité et Prévention de la Délinquence, CLSPD), or still the Local Group for the Management of Delinquency (Groupe Local de Traitement de la Délinquance, GLTD). The research thus identifies the decentering strategies of the State and the transfer of the production of security towards a diversity of local actors, including mayors and municipal services. As a result, a wide array of local public policies regarding security, with varying relevance, has emerged. The first lesson brought out by the research is the importance of the role played by the super-structural node, which we call super-node, and which brings together the mayor or local elected official in charge of security, the head of State police, the head of municipal police and the representative of the State. It is found that in the nodal governance mechanism, this informal group generates a collective dynamic that allows for bringing together both producers and consumers of local security, revolving within local security networks. The roughly forty qualitative interviews conducted also allows for identifying that the Justice sector, a producer of security in the same vein as private security or social mediation, appears more distant than the study of the regulatory legislation organizing partnerships would have indicated. Social landlords, transporters, and public national education appear clearly as important, but peripheral actors in terms of security, integrating this “extended family” of local security. The second lesson relates to the functioning of the nodal apparatus itself, as well as the super-node, as the research allows for identifying those resources that are shared across all nodes. This further allows for the identification of mechanisms for the distribution of tasks between different actors, and more specifically between the two organizations of state and municipal police, who work as much in competition, as in complementarity, with one another. This research explores the role played by information in the workings of the super-node, as well as the importance of trust in the interpersonal relations of representatives of the nodes within the super-node. Finally, the study allows for gaining perspective on the limitations of current nodal governance measures: the recognized faults in otherwise reliable tools allows for properly informing the super-node regarding phenomena of violence, as well as evaluating the efficiency of the measure. This further allows for questioning the autonomy of nodal governance measures, as trust can open avenues for deviancy and collegiality can become detrimental to the traceability of responsibility. The fracture with civil society is clear, and does not facilitate control in a mode of production of security that is developing in parallel to traditional local democracy mechanisms.

Keyphrases: policing, nodal governance, superstructural node, local security network, local security committee, France