How to Social

Crime work
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Based on research
by Michael King, c;:a,.,a
Department, Brunei
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Foreword
iii
I The Background to Reform
II The Eonnemaison Approach
4
III From 'Hot Summers' to Community Action 9
N L=al Responses to Cri.Jre Prevention 1 5
V Discussion 34
References 40
Bibliography and Further Reading on
Crime Prevention in France 42
The author wishes to thank the Hane Office for its
contribution to the expenses involved in carrying
out this research, and to John Graham and Carole
Willis of the Home Office Research and Planning
Unit, who first suggested the research, for their
helpful comments on earlier drafts of parts of this
report.
An occasiooal paper p.Jblished by
NAE:AO
Natiooal Associ aticn for the Cire arrl ResettlaDent
of Offerrlers
169 Cl.aj;jlam Road, Lcnkn SW9 oro (T: 01 582 6500 l
ISBN 0 85069 077 3
1988
i
)
FOREWORD
NACRO is pleased to publish this occasional paper on social
crime prevention in France by Michael King.
As interest grows in measures for reducing youth crime in this
country, experience from elsewhere is invaluable in helping us
to formulate our own policies and approaches.
Michael King's penetrating account of hew the French respond
to delinquent or troublesome behaviour arrong their young
people will be of interest to anyone ooncerned with youth
policies and provision, or broader crime and social policy
rratters.
The views expressed in this paper are not necessarily those of
NACRO. However, we fully canmend the paper as an extremely
useful contribution to the current debate about yout..11 crime
and the responses to it. We would like to thank the author
for his generosity in allowing us to publish and distribute
his work.
iii
Tcny 01ristq:lher
Chairman
NACRO
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I THE BACKGROUND TO REFORM
During the short period the Socialist Party was in power in the
early 1980s, France embarked upon what was probably the
most ambitious crime prevention programme ever undertaken in
Europe. The programme has been with little change
by the present Conservative Government. This report describes
and assesses the French approach to social crime prevention.
It starts by examining the political and philosophical roots of
this programme. It then gives an account of the way in
which specific social policies were promoted and sustained
by new administrative structures grown from these roots.
Finally, it looks at some examples of the ways in which these
policies have found expression in attempts by local authorities
to prevent crime in their area by social intervention rather
than police action.
The Socialist Party's success in the Presidential and
Parliamentary elections of 1981 was not just a reaction to the
the fact that seven years of Giscard d'Estaing's Conservative
Government had .failed to close the deep divisions in French
society. (1) It represented a resurgence of socialist idealism.
The French, under Hitterand, were to become a nation in
which everyone, rich and poor, privileged and under-
privileged, of whatever political colour would work together
for the common good; where power would devolve from an
elitist Parisian bureaucracy to local governments elected by
the communities they served. The ensuing crime prevention
reforms should be seen in the context of this ideal of
community based on the 'commune' (the neighbourhood or
locality).
In the specific area of crime prevention and control, France,
Like most other Western countries, had experienced a sharp
rise in reported crime in general and in the reporting of
violent crime in particular. Between 1970 and 1976, for example
theft with violence had risen by 4167. and armed robbery by
4807..(2) In 1976, a committee was set up under the
chairmanship of the Minister of Justice, Alain Peyrefitte.
Its report, 'Reponses a la violence' (3) published a year
later concentrated its attention on violence as a . social
psychological phenomenon, a product primarily of personal
pathology and the need, therefore, for individualised
treatment through the media of the courts and clin'ics. It
did, however, recognise the effect of social factors, such
as employment, poor housing and the absence of any". sense of
belonging to a community as important contributory factors in
the aetiuloyy.
The problem with the Peyrefitte Report was that, while it
provided an interesting analysis of the reasons for the
upsurge in violent crime, the solutions it offered of a social
preventative nature were vague and general. It recommended, for
example, that scattered, uncoordinated developments around the
l
periphery of towns which destroyed the natural environment
should be avoided (recommendation 11); that people should be
encouraged to become personally involved in their neighbourhood
(recommendation 18); and that the town should become a meeting
place for people rather than a crossroad for loneliness
(recommendation 23). Only where they addressed policies to be
adopted by the traditional institutions of law, medicine and
social work ,;ere the of a llXlre specific nature and
here they were very much of the more-of-the-same-but-better
variety. Despite the subsequent introduction of Departmental
Committees to coordinate crime prevention activities,
these proved to be little more than forums for discussion.
While the Peyrefitte Report committed the right to the general
principle of crime prevention, it was only with the change in
government in 1981 and the consequent radical change in
social policy and administrative structures that any real
progress was made to translate vague preventative ideas into
social action.
Yet, it needed more than election victory for the Socialist
Party to transform what had essentially been a policy of
containment in relation to increasing crime into a national
campaign for crime prevention. The catalyst for change came in
the summer of 1981 shortly after the Presidential election. That
summer, niclmamed 1' ete-chaud (the hot .summer), saw
violence errupt in parts of Lyon and Marseille. The form this
violence took was an outbreak of attacks on'cars. Many were set
alight in the streets, while others were stolen and used for
races or 'rodeos' and Hollywood style chases with the police.
The new Hitterand Government, casting a wary eye both across
the Channel at the much more serious inner-city violence
which had taken p1ace in England and forward to the local
elections due for 1983, decided that some urgent action was
called for. The immediate response was t'o introduce a major
programme of summer camps and activities for young people living
in towns and cities. The nature of these ete-Jeunes
programmes and their impact are discussed later in this
reP,ort. The Government's longer-term response was to
investigate ways of tackling the underlying problems by setting
up an inter-departm=ntal commission to seek solutions to the
problems young people experienced in finding employment and
social integration, La Delegation a !'insertion
professionelle et sociale des jeunes en difficult&, from which
came the proposal for a network of nationwide Youth Centres
(Mission Locales) (see page 22). Two further committees of
enquiry were also created! La commission pour le developpment
social des guartiers (under the chairmanship of Hubert
Dubedout) and La commission des maires sur la securite
(presided over by Gilbert Bonnemaison, then deputy mayor
of Epinay-sur-Seine and a member of the French Parliament)
produced their reports a year later in 1982.
overlap between the concerns of these two
that both stressed the importance of
and social environment of major
There was clearly some
latter Committees in
improving the physical
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cities, and in particular the depressed neighbourhoods
their high immigrant population, poor schools,
unemployment and deplorable housing standards.
Bonnemaison Report, however, went much wider in its
faceted attack on crime and its causes. It is to' this
Report and its consequences that we shall now turn.
3
with
high
The
multi-
latter
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II THE BONNEMAISON APPROACH
The general philosophy of the Bonnemaison Committee's
Report, 'Face a la delinguance: prevention, repression, soliaarite'
(Opposing Crime: prevention, repression, solidarity), is
clear and direct. It is that recent history demonstrates
that a policy based solely' or substantially on repression
has been proved to fail both in terms of reducing crime and
in its efforts to make people feel more secure. Indeed, it
claimed, the ever-decreasing police clear-up rates and the high
level of recidivism were ample evidence that investment in
traditional crime control appparatus of police, courts and
prison attracted a diminishing return. (4) The failure of
these traditional methods, the Report concluded, underlines.
the need for a joint approach, for a combination of social
preventative measures working hand in hand with the existing
forces of law and order. The Committee, therefore, goes on to
identify what it considers to be the causes of criminal
behaviour:
' ... living conditions and notably overpopulation and
segregation in certain buildings, overcrowding,
difficulties in integration, both social and in
employment, changes in the manner of family life, the
absence of organised social life during the day, the
absence of social controls in people's relations with
one another, poverty and the exclusion from the
mainstream of society of certain categories of the
population, aggravated by specific phenomena such
as drugs, alcoholism, increased temptation
offered by the growth in disposable goods and the
recent economic crisis.' (page 31)
No single cause on its own can, according to the Report,
explain crime. Thus, while unemployment is often referred to as
a cause, it does not necessarily lead to crime. It is rather
the combination of causes which gives rise to criminality,
just as it can give rise to insanity, suicide, drug-taking and
alc'oholism. What this analysis of the causes of crime
revealed to the Commission was the urgent need for state action
within a framework of decentralisation (page 31).
The problem with previous anti-crime policies, according to the
Committee of Mayors, was their piecemeal nature, the lack
of coordinated action and general ignorance among the
centralised administrative bureaucracy as to the real causes of
crime. These failures were not helped by local
goyernment's dependency on this same Paris bureaucrac for
funding, the effect of which was to stifle virtually all local
initiatives. (5)
The Committee's solution was to create the
would encourage two forms of partnership,
local and central Government and the second
4
structures that
the first between
between these two
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administrations and groups at
responsible for putting schemes
the local community
into effect.
level
For France', with its strong tradition of centralised
administration, this was certainly a radical departure,
but it should be remembered that it came at a time when the
Socialist Government was already strongly committed to a general
policy of devolution of power from Paris to the
provinces. The originality of the Bonnemaison approach lay
rather in the way in which it deliberately turned its back on
solutions which saw crime and criminals as distinct and
separate from the problems that beset society in general and l i f ~
in the large cities in particular. Instead, it placed prevention
and anti-crime policies firmly in the context of more general
political issues related to the relief of unemployment among the
young, racial discrimination and the improvement of the urban
environment and the quality of people's life.
More than a quarter of the Commission's 64 recommendations had
direct implicat1ons for discouraging or controlling criminal
behaviour, but a large proportion of these were also concerned
with housing policies, or protecting particular sections of the
population.
These can be divided into two distinct types of recommendation.
The first consists of proposals designed to encourage social
harmony in the cities, communal life, support for victims,
the young and social outcasts. These proposals were also
intended to reduce tensions both between generations and
between races by promoting cultural pluralism, and
participation in the life and decisions of the community. (6)
No less important were the changes in administrative structure
that the Committee of Mayors .recommended. These would
assure not only the essential devolution of power and
funding, but also an involvement in preventative policies of
national and local politicians which was to prove so crucial
for the success of these reforms. The Committee proposed a
three-tier system of committees, which was in fact put into
effect by laws passed on 8 June 1983. At the central
Government level, there is the Conseil National de
Prevention de la Delinguance (CNPD), presided over by the
Prime Minister or a minister delegated by him. The CNDP's
executive powers are divided among three separate bodies
which include among their members parliament delegates, mayors,
representatives from the six ministries and from national
organisations involved in crime prevention and people
'speciallyqualified' by their knowledge and experience. A
General Commission has the task of putting the policies ~ e c i d e d
by the Conseil National into effect and reporting back to the
Conseil. Through its five Charges de Missions, it is
responsible for stimulating prevention in all areas of the
country and in four specific areas of action:
l. social life
2. education, training, employmemt and social integration
3. courts and police
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4. research and communication
In 1986, the had a budget of FF47.7 million (the budget for
1987 is FF42.25 million) to cover both the administrative
costs of the prevention councils and grants to individual
projects. This is a relatively small sum compared to the
budgets of other central Government coordinating and financing
bodies, but the aim always been for the Conseil to be one of
many partners, both ministerial and local government, in
the funding of individual projects. Little significance should
be attached to the fall in the budget so far as the
present Government's support of the social aspects of
prevention are concerned since the Prime Minister, who is
President of the Council's executive, has highlighted as
priorities for the current year the integration of young
people, the prevention of recidivism and the development of
community spirit (civisme).
The second and least important of the three tiers of prevention
councils is the CDDP (Conseil Departemental) which operates at
the equivalent of County Council level. Despite the fact that
the Mayor's Commission envisaged an important role for this
body, in all but rural areas it is little more than that of
advisor and facilitator for the Conseil Communal, enabling the
head of public services, including police and judiciary, to
respond to initiatives from the local councils operating in
individual towns and cities.
According to the Bonnemaison Report :
'The commune must be the privileged place where
prevention is put into effect. It is at this level
that preventative action to be taken in different .
neighbourhoods in respect of pre-deviant groups,
by methods which bring together different
administrative services and specialist associations
will have the greatest chance of success.' (page lll)
In accordance with this view that crime prevention must, if it
is to succeed, have the full backing of the local community,
there has been no attempt to impose crime prevention committees
on unwilling local councils. Instead, the initiative for
installing a Conseil Communal de Prevention de la Delinguance
has been left entirely to town councils. There has,
nevertheless, been an impressive take-up with two thirds of towns
and cities of over 30,000 inhabitants having introduced a CCPD by
1987 and one half of those towns of between9,000 and_ 30,000.
The map of France (page 8) provides some indication of the
distribution of crime prevention initiatives throughout France
and those towns and cities which have been particularly active.
While not all these towns and cities with a CCPD have a
administration, those that have have been more
than right-wing councils both in installing CCPDs and in
about the philosophy of social crime prevention.
However, one essential feature in the success of the French
experience has been the political consensus among all except the
6
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extreme right that what was needed was a cooperative, non-
repressive approach to youth crime. It was, after all,
Alan Peyref i tte, a Minister under Giscard' s presidency,
who was the first at ministerial level to propose non-punitive
solutions to crime. Moreover, the continuity of the policy was
assured by the broad political base of the Bonnemaison Committee
of mayors. Many of these mayors were already, or were after
the 1981 elections to become, members of parliament,
~ a r r y i n g their commitment to prevention into the national arena.
One city which has embraced this philosophy wholeheartedly
is Lille in the North-Westof France. It is a city with
high unemployment and a significant immigrant population,
mainly from North African countries. Lille, with the former
Prime Minister of France, Monsieur Pierre Mauroy, as its Mayo,
was one of the pilot cities for CCPDs. The Conseil Communal at
Lille certainly conforms to the description of these Councils as
'more of a sounding box for community crime prevention concerns
than an efficient instrument of decision-making capable of
allocating resources to specific projects'. (7)
It is a strange mixture of local politicians and administrators,
representatives from the police, judiciary and local offices of
ministries, such as social security, education and youth and
sport, together with members chosen from local voluntary bodies
(Associations), such as clubs de prevention, drug information
centres and social centres, and an academic sociologist. The
full council sits approximately once every two months under the
chairmanship of the Deputy Mayor, who describes himself. as a
mediator, trying to push the members in the direction of a
consensus.
While the membership of CCPD varies from place to place, the
law insists that one half of the decision-making members
should be appointed by the Mayor and the other half by the
Prefet (the Chief Administrator for the Departement). The
other members are consultative only and are chosen by agreement
between Mayor and Prefet. In Lille, however, the distinction
between decision-making and consultative members has little
practical importance, since the Deputy Mayor, as Chairman,
insists on consensus policies. He maintains that the CCPD is
not a debating arena for promoting sectional interests and
describes how at the first first meeting he cut short a
youth worker who started to criticise the police. (8) He
describes the council as having two important 'functions.
Firstly 'it creates a sort of coherence, a unity, a common
front cementeu by the general concern to prevent crime'.
Secondly, it ensures that all the participants are familiar
both with the problems faced by the city and with the role
each of them plays in attempting to cope with these problems.
This is echoed by Bonnemaison himself in his recent book (9)
'The sight of someone who was until then only a voice
on the telephone or a signature at the foot of an
administrative document can in itself have immediate
positive effects in unblocking complex situations.'
(page 73)
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The cumulative number for each Departement of (1) Missions locales
(2) Commission de developpement social des quartiers and
(3) Crime prevention, contracts from the National Council for Crime
prevention
6 or more 20)
3 - 5
2 or less

towns having all three programmes
[Reproduced from Peyre and Pineau, 1987)
8
III FROM 'HOT SUMMERS' TO COMMUNITY ACTION
The obvious starting point for any observer of the French social
crime prevention programme is the summer of 1981, the point
when the threat of street violence on a large scale galvanised
the politicians and civil servants into a swift and unequivocal
response. As we haVe seen, it was this response which led
eventually to the Bonnemaison proposals and to the setting up of
Crime Prevention Councils. This starting point is
particularly pertinent from the British point of view, for it
allows comparisons to be made, on the one hand, between the
French analysis of the causes of inner-city violence among young
people and the radical programme of action that this analysis
provoked and, on the other hand the more conservative and
'classical'. response of Lord Scarman and the British Government
to the Brixton and Toxteth riots. This report is not
intended to provide a detailed comparison between the French and
British situations but to give, as far as possible, a
descriptive account of social crime prevention in France. Readers
familiar with the British Government's policies and their effects
on young people in the inner-cities will be able to draw their
own conclusions.
The ete-jeunes operations in France from 1982 to the
present have been greeted as major successes by successive
French governments. They point not only to the avoidance of acts
of group violence among young people, but also to the fall in the
rate for minor crimes in many of the large cities (10) over the
summer months compared to previous years. One French
commentator refers to the initial ete-jeunes programme of
l 982 as a 'coup', .meaning 'a programme of action with limited
objectives which mobilises specific resources without seeking
to disrupt existing structures or to have long-term aims.
(11) It was essentially the ideology of community action
which emerged from this 'coup' of removing young people from
those areas of the cities where they might be tempted into
acts of violence, that gave rise to the new crime prevention
policies in France.
It should be recalled that France has never had detention
centres or borstals. The nearest equivalent, the 'centres
fermes ', ceased to exist after 1978 after educateurs
(social workers employed by the Ministry of Justice and
centred on the courts) (12) had refused to participate in
the incarceration of children. Short of locking large
numbers of.adolescents in prison, the option of using the courts
and penal establishments to control youth violence simply did not
exist for the French. Some alternative to repression had to be
found.
The idea that emerged was to offer the attraction of holiday
camps to under 18 year olds in the 'guartiers chauds' (problem
areas of the inner-cities) and to provide a wide variety of
activities over the summer months for those who stayed behind.
To give some idea of the extent of the programme, by 1983, one
year after its commencement, 10,000 young people were given
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holidays,
organised
while a further 100,000 participated in some form of
summer activity. (13)
The ete-jeunes operations were born out of the
juxtaposition of two different approaches to crime prevention in
the deprived environment of the inner-cities. One approach, 'the
general philosophy of classical prevention', which is associated
with the children's ;udges and traditional social work, sees
crime prevention as protecting young people from the dangers
presented by their moral and social environment and by poor
living conditions. (14) The other, a more political response,
sees the answer in revitalising the inner-cities by restoring
community life and improving the physical and moral
environment. The summer camps, therefore, were conceived in the
light of these two approaches, not simply as a way of removing
young people from trouble and keeping a watchful eye over them,
but as an opportunity to allow them to take part in activities
which would both interest them and give them a positive image of
themselves and their society, while at the same time protecting
them, at least temporarily, from their deprived
environment.(15) The combination of these two approaches which
featured in the ete-jeunes programmes were later to form
the backbone of France's crime prevention policies.
As was to be the case for the crime prevention programmes
which followed, the organisation and financing of the ete-
jeunes operations combined the resources of central
Government departments, the departements and the voluntary
sector (associations) such as the Red Cross, Secours
Catholigue and Secours Populaire. The main difference from
the preventative schemes which followed the Bonnemaison
Keport, apart from their temporary nature, lay in the fact that
the Prefet often played a prominent role in setting up and
co-ordinating projects, a role which was later taken over in
many urban areas by the Mayor and the CCPD.
The Ete-jeunes Projects
Although the French crime prevention programme was to become
so broad as to include almost in its ambit anything that could
vaguely be related to the general objective of reducing
crime, it was the ete-jeunes operations of 1982 which
provided the precursors for much that was interesting and
innovative in subsequent preventative action. In general, these
operations were directed at those young people at the of
society who would not normally benefit from conventional social
work_. The other major innovation was the way in whic)'t the local
nature of gave the initiative to put forward
ideas to those on the ground rather than being imposed' either
from above or from Paris.
The operations covered fell into three main types :
1 The
had
these
supplementary funding of existing organisations which
already proposed activities over the summer period:
organisations included charities, clubs de
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prevention - clubs for children and adolescents run by
'animateurs' (see below) and youth workers- and youth clubs.
2 New activities of a 'holiday' nature, such as the Club
Mediterranes's camp camps organised by
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police or army, games, sporting and theatrical activities
organised on a local basis, such as the Centres Animation
Jeunesse in the Departement de Nord.
Efforts to mobilise groups of young people or whole
communities: these added an energy to the operations
which could be channelled in the direction of claiming
grants and benefits for local projects or simply into
giving people a feeling of solidarity.
The latter two types of operation also enabled new actors to be
introduced into crime prevention activities. Many social
workers, for example, found themselves more at home in this
kind of work than in more mundane social work. Moreover, it
allowed them to alter their image among young people and at the
same time escape from bureaucratic hierarchies. Other groups
that were given a role in delinquency included police and
military. This was something of a two-edged sword. The
police and soldiers who took part in camps for young
people were in general a great success, establishing a rapport
based both upon their shared cultural identity with many of the
youngsters and upon their physical skills and prowess. The
negative aspect of this involvement was that, in the eyes of many
of the young people, social workers suffered by comparison,
appearing feeble.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the ete-jeunes
programme enabled a quite new breed of crime-preventers to
emerge. These were.the youth leaders, the 'fixateurs de bande'.
(16) Often from North African communities, they were
encouraged to involve others, younger and less
enthusiastic, in local activities. Often later they went on to
become professional animateurs and some qualified social workers.
While the original ete-jeunes programme in 1981 was a
hurried and improvised affair,a last-minute response to the
imminent threat of inner-city chaos, its organisation today,
after five years of experience has in many areas all the
planning and precision of a military exercise. Taking Clichy as
an exarnple,a densely-populated, high immigrant suburb of Paris,
anyone who is under 25 and lives in the area may a
'passport' for ten francs (1). This enables him or her to
take part without further payment in any of the summer
activities, ranging from tennis to motor mechanics. These are
held every day of the week except Sundays throughout July and
August. The 'passport' serves not only as an entrance card
for the various activities, but also as an insurance cover
and as a record enabling organisers of the programme to
monitor which groups of young people from which areas are
participating and to pin-point those parts of the commune
where ete-jeunes has not yet penetrated. In addition,
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the mairie makes camping equipment available at the town hall
to any group of young people who, with the help of an
animateur, organise their own camping holiday. It also owns a
sports and recreational centre with overnight accommodation some
40 miles from Paris which is open to anyone with a 'passport'.
The important principle that guides the ete-jeunes
activities is that they should, as far as possible, respond to
the interests and wishes of young people themselves rather than
being imposed on them. While there is insufficient space here to
list all activities in every commune's ete-ieune programme,
a few examples will give some idea of their range and
variety. In just two of the 96 Departements (Seine et Marne
and Seine St.Dennis) activities included courses in pot-holing,
video-making, aerobics, modern dancing and computer
programming. Among the sports included were tennis, canoeing,
judo, French boxing, Thai boxing, climbing and, of course, the
ubiquitous table-tennis and football. As regular events there
were discos, an open-air cinema, and a mammoth inflatable
bouncer set up in the grounds of a housing estate. In almost
all the communes, camping equipment and bicyles could be
borrowed and teenagers were encouraged to organise their own
camps around their particular sporting or cultural interests.
The political leaning of the local council appears to make very
little difference to either the extent or the nature of the
activities offered. The only difference is in the
attitude towards what is seen as the main objective of these
activities. While left-wing politicians tend to talk of
providing young people with the opportunity of realising their
potential, to take them out of. their depressing surroundings,
those on the right tend to speak rather of teaching young people
to accept responsibility for themselves and for others.
It is perhaps easy to dismiss the French achievement in
mounting the ete-jeunes programmes as offering little
that is new. Most holiday camps or scout groups in the United
Kingdom provide a wide range of activities. Such criticisms
ignore the fact that, while most of these activities are no
doubt available for children with resourceful parents, little
effort is made in this country to bring these activities to
children of less resourceful or motivated parents and actively
encouraging them to participate. For the purposes of crime-
prevention, it is important that children who would otherwise
be roaming the streets or hanging around shopping-centres are
engaged in enjoyable, self-fulfilling activities. As several
local politicians put it: 'In the long run prevention is cheaper
than paying for broken windows'.
Indeed, before turning to the longer-term crime prevention
projects, it would be helpful to summarise those features of
the ete-jeunes programme which have effectively laid the
foundations for these more permanent projects. These are:
The cooperation between government departments at the
national, departemental and communal level in providing
12

funding, scaff and facilities: one striking example
is the part played by the Caisse d'allocation familiale
(CAF), which administers the child benefit payment to
parents with more than one child. The CAF has for many
years issued bans de vacances on application from families
with dependent children entitled to benefits. These
vouchers may be used as contributions towards holidays for
the children and towards the ete-jeunes programmes. In
one area the local CAF office had even agreed to place
unclaimed vouchers at the disposal of the programme's
organisers so that children whose families had not applied
for vouchers could still have subsidised places on- the camps
and activities.
The conceptual links forged between crime-prevention
involving children and young people in sport
recreational activities: the general belief
and
and
that
inactivity, boredom, low-moral and a poor self-image,
rather than wickedness or the lack of parental control, are
the main causes of most petty juvenile crime finds expression
both at a general level and also in the approach towards
individual youngsters. For example, children and young
people who have special problems and are therefore
considered to be 'at risk' or who are already under court
supervision orders are often offered free places on camps and
summer activities. Every effort is made to integrate them
with other children with varying success. Also, court
social workers (educateurs) and police officers are
frequently seconded to summer projects and so get to work
with young people who are not officially 'delinquent' but
who come from similar backgrounds to those who are processed
by the courts.
The gradual involvement of ethinic minority groups in 'main-
stream' social and sporting activities: The ete-
jeunes operations have played an important part in
'penetrating' isolated immigrant populations without
threatening their cultural and religious identity and
integrity. Keeping children occupied during the summer
months is a problem for all families of whatever cultural
background. The sports and holiday activiues have been
sufficiently varied and attractive to appeal to young people
of all cultures. The ethnic mix of youngsters
participating in these activities without apparent hostility
or suspicion is most striking.
A further important development has been the a:
animateurs, mainly from North African origins. This has
had two important consequences. First, it has given those
recruited a job and self-respect, even if only for the
summer months. Secondly, these early recruits to the
ete-jeunes operations have drawn in others from among
their family and friends. One interesting feature of the
1987 programme which attracted the attention of French
observers was the involvement for the first time of girls
from North African communities. This was seen as an
13

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indication of how well the integration policy was going.
o Encouraging and responding to initiatives from young people
themselves.
Political consensus concerning the causality of youth crime.
,
14
)
IV LOCAL RESPONSES TO CRIME PREVENTION
POISSY
The first thing that Philippe Migaux, the Charge de Mission
for the Poissy CCPb, . does when explaining how the local
community responded to the Bonnemaison report is to unfold a
plan of the town. He then presents a short account of the
town's history, its economy, the distribution of ethnic groups
and classes and the social problems that existed before 1983 when
Poissy was chosen as a pilot town for the new crime prevent.ion
policy. Such an analytical approach to social policy is perhaps
surprising coming from someone whose job involves management and
organisational skills rather than theoretical knowledge.
Philippe Migaux and his predecessor, Herve-Frederic
Mecheri, are examples of a breed of young administrators in
France appointed to responsible positions precisely
because they combine intellectual qualities with practical
experience and management skills. Migaux, for example, has a
double doctorate in ethnology and political science and worked
for several years with drug addicts. Mecheri has
a doctorate in education, teaches social work at a Paris
University, and has eight years experience as an educateur de
(detached social worker).
A further example of this combination of the analytical and the
practical which is a hallmark of many of those working in the
management echelons of the French crime prevention programme is
that, after leaving his job at Poissy, Mecheri wrote a book which
not only gives a detailed account of the setting up of the CCPD
and the early months of its operation, but also casts a
critical eye over the Bonnemaison report and the crime prevention
policies that have emerged from it. (17)
The Problem
As Philippe Migaux explains, Poissy is a town of some 38,000
about 20 minutes by train from the centre of Paris.
Its social problems stem from a number. of related factors.
Firstly, there is an uncomfortable mix of rich commuters
living shoulder to shoulder with the poor, increasingly unem-
ployed inhabitants of subsidised high rise blocks of flats.
( 20X),
Secondly, there is the large immigrant population
mainly of North African origin, sucked in by the town's
main employer, Peugeot, before the economic cr1s1s and now
bearing the brunt of redundancies and unemployment. Many of
them live in a high-rise estate on the edge of the town (La
Coudraie) which has an immigrant population of 35X and includes
a hostel for several hundred single, male workers.
Thirdly,
between
up over
the town has a very high proportion of young people
12 and 25 years old. Migaux estimates that they make
607. of the population. High unemployment, the
15
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/
relatively isolated position of Poissy for those who do not
have cars and who cannot afford regular trips into Par1s,
together with the proximity of the capital,made them vulnerable
to drugs and marginalisation. Drug dealers would come into
Poissy from Paris and 'turn on' schoolchildren, helping them
to graduate from hashish to heroin. Once hooked, these young
people would turn to petty crime as a way of paying for their
supply of opiates apd would also be used by sophisticated
criminals to carry out more serious criminal acts. For those who
did not turn to drugs, the lack of work and increasing alienation
from the mainstream of society and its values offered another
route to criminal behaviour.
The Response of the CCPD
When
of
Poissy was selected as a pilot town for the introduction
a Conseil Communal de Prevention de la Delinguance in
November the three problem areas that were
identified as needing urgent action were marginalisation,
immigration and drug addiction.
Almost the first action initiated by the CCPD was to set up
three committees (Commissions) which brought together all those
local organisations and individuals who have contact with and
experience of the problems of youth and ethnic minorities. The
proposals that emerged from these Committees, Prevention
(prevention), Animation (activities) and Insertion (integration)
set a positive and progressive tone to the crime prevention
programme, which could so easily have become highly repressive
and defensive in its approach. (18) For example, the
Prevention committee, far from proposing compulsory treatment
and isolation of drug addicts, suggested setting up a mini-
medical team to deal with young addicts in cr1s1s and a
group of parents of addicts who could offer advice to other
parents on how to recognise the early symptoms of drug-
addiction and what to do about it. Young people, in
general, were seen by this Committee not as a threat to the
social order, but as a vulnerable section of the community
needing help at moments of crisis and continuous support to help
t ~ e m to stabilise their lives and direct their energies away from
activities that were self-destructive or likely to 'marginalise'
them. Hence the proposal for a short-term hostel for young
people in crisis, where help could be offered to deal with their
immediate problems,or the idea of providing study centres where
schoolchildren could go between 4.30 and 7.30 pm instead of
being left to their own devices until their parents came home
from work.
The Activities Committee included among its members almost
everyone in the town who was involved-in sport and leisure
activities, from the local librarian to the scout-master to the
fire-chief who ran life-saving courses - some 29 people
altogether. The activities proposed were, with some
variations, similar to those already described in the section on
ete-;eunes:
16
)
The third Committee Integration, brought together those
concerned with providing training courses and helping young
people seek employment with representatives of immigrant
organisations. Their proposals included ' much closer
collaboration among both professionals and non-
professionals engaged in helping young people become independent
financially and socially, and the creation of a Hiss ion Locale
(Youth Centre) (See page 22) at Poissy, because the nearest
Mission refused to help young people from the town.
The next stage in Poissy's response to the Bonnemaison
Report was to set up or finance Associations to put the
Committees' proposals into effect. At La Coudraie, the
'ghetto' estate on the fringes of the town, two Associations,
one dealing with youth issues and the other with immigrant
problems, cooperated in setting up advice and information
dissemination projects aimed at making the immigrant population,
particularly those with limited French, know what help was
available to them. They also set up courses and
activities tailored specifically to the needs of immigrant
families, such as language courses, help with school-work
and assistance in seeking employment. All this was
carried out with the help and participation of the
population of La Coudraie through regular public meetings and
cooperation with representatives of immigrant groups.
Another Association was concerned with making contact with young
people and coordinating activities. A team consisting of a
detached social worker and an animateur was deployed to each
guartier. 'It is not enough to make activities available in the
hope that young people will want to participate', says Philippe
Migaux, 'You have to go out and look for them'. It is through
the work of these teams, and the activities that they initiate
and coordinate, that new animateurs are coopted to the summer
operations and the process of 'penetration' progresses.
A final aspect of the work of the Association concerns
training and finding jobs for young people. As well as offering
work experience placements and training under the Travail a
1'Utilite Communale (TUC) schemes, short courses on
interviewing techniques, writing a curriculum vitae and letters
to prospective employers were offered to young people seeking
work, with individual follow-up sessions every three weeks until
a permanent job had been found.
The Partnership
Philippe Migaux, like others responsible for crime prevention,
places considerable emphasis on the have been
forged following the introduction of the CCPD.
At Poissy this partnership includes not only those government
departments who have contributed to the success of the
prevention programme elsewhere, such as social services, youth
and sport and justice, and the various associations and other
local organisations that have coordinated their efforts to
17
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create some coherent plan to tackle social problems as
identified and defined by the CCPD and its committees.
It has also involved as partners a number of adults in various
occupations ranging from concierges to school teachers. Under a
scheme entitled Adultes en relais (adults in touch) these adults
'
after a short training programme have acted as outposts for the
crime prevention mission within the community, reporting any
problems involving y o v . ~ g people to the Mission, rather than to
the police. Problems include drugs, child abuse and criminal
activities. The Adultes en relais scheme has created links with
local schools, which have proved so difficult to achieve in other
areas.
Another important partnership in the Poissy area is that
between the Crime Prevention Mission and the police. It is a
relationship which in other areas has caused problems for both
police officers and social workers. Prior to 1981, these two
groups of professionals approached youth crime from almost
completely opposite directions. The police saw their task as one
of control through the traditional methods of arrest and
prosecution, while social workers were occupied with helping
young people and their families to cope with a multitude of
problems resulting from deprivation and increasing insecurity and
instability in their social environment. For social workers,
insensitive and seemingly unnecessary police action merely added
to the difficulties encountered by these young people and their
families.
The Bonnemaison Report, perhaps idealistically, saw prevention
and repression as two sides of the same coin, two totally
compatible concepts, both equally necessary in the fight against
crime. A shift in both police and social work practice, due in
part to the emergence of new crime prevention policies, has
facilitated a rapprochement between the respective positions of
these two professional groups.
Social workers now place less emphasis on helping clients on an
individual or family basis and direct their efforts more to
involving people both young and old in community activities.
The police have now recognised that prosecuting young
offenders is rarely a solution to anti-social adolescent
behaviour, much of which can be traced to boredom and the
lack of opportunity for self-fulfilment. This does not mean
that their different approaches to crime in general has changed,
but rather that the ground for conflict has shifted from petty-
crime to more serious matters, such as drug dealing and
organised burglary.
While police and other workers involved in crime prevention,
like the politicians of left and right, have reached a consensus
on the need for preventative rather than repressive action as
a response for most juvenile crime, there are still wide
variations from area to area as to the way in which the
prevention/repression partnership operates in practice. At one
end of the spectrum is Clichy,where policy disagreements between
the Mayor and the Commissioner of Police have resulted in an
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absence of cooperation between prevention workers and the police.
At a luncheon put on by the Mayor for all those working in the
ete-jeunes programme, the police were conspicuous by their
absence. At the other end of the spectrum, at Epinay-sur-Seine,
where Gilbert Bonnemaison is the Mayor, police officers actually
help to operate the ete-jeunes programme, both at the
organisational level and in running courses on caving. In other
areas, such as Lille, the police role is often to take a low
profile where juvenile crime is concerned, while playing an
active part on the CCPD. Here, as in many places, the police
have benefited materially from grants for equipment such as
computers for crime-monitoring and closed-circuit surveillance
cameras.
At Poissy, Philippe Migaux makes it very clear that in
his view
together
ask for
police and social workers should not work
because of the temptation for the police to
information:
'Once young people know that their social workers are
in cahoots with the police, they stop trusting them.'
Any passing on of information to the police has therefore to Lake
place at the highest level. As Charge de Mission, Philippe
Migaux has no direct contact with young people and so risks
nothing by having a close relationship with the town's Police
Conunissioner. Even so, the informat.ion given is of a
general nature; clients are not betrayed
'I inform the
drug-addiction
on the scene.
repressive work.
police, for example, of new kinds of
or when a new gang of dealers appears
It's up to the police to carry out its
We don't get involved.'
This high level exchange operates both ways :
'If the police arrest someone.selling drugs or breaking
into a car and it's someone that we know and are trying
to help, in the knowledge that prison is not the answer
for that kind of kid, the police will often agree to
drop any prosecution.'
What happens at Poissy, and doubtless elsewhere, is that the
CCPD, and more particularly the administrators of the crime
prevention programme, have taken on the role of intermediary
between social work agencies and the police and also, to a lesser
degree, between the public and the police through_ the u ~ of the
Adultes en Relais scheme. The framework of crime prevention, and
the ideals which it encompasses, has given both official backing
to the role of intermediary and has legitimised this role, making
it acceptable to social workers and police alike.
19
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LA VILLETTE
La Villette is a major new exhibition park situated in the
North-East suburbs of Paris. Its publicity brochure
describes La Villette as, 'A new world, a world of discovery
where science,art and industry seek an audience, a new way of
opening one's eyes, of learning, of being amazed, of listening,
of .marvelling, When completed it will include not only a
science museum, but a huge hall, ideal for rock concerts, the
new Paris music conservatory with its own concert hall - all
set in a parkland area with gardens, large lawns and open
air exhibits available to the public free of charge.
What, one might well ask, has all of this to do with crime
prevention? Dr Christian Brule is in no doubt about the need
for the centre to play its part in helping the community to help
keep young people away from crime. As President of the
Association pour la prevention du site de La Villette (APSV),
he is not content merely to protect the buildings and their
contents against thieves and vandals. He believes that the
centre should be involved in providing solutions to youth
problems. Translated into practical terms, this means a number
of different schemes designed to bring young people from
deprived backgrounds into La Villette and, once they are there,
helping them to develop skills and interests which will lead
eventually to employment and a stable existence.
As Dr Brule points out, there are some two million
people living within half an hour of La Villette and about
half of them are under 25 years old. Its immediate
neighbours are some of the poorest suburbs of Paris. The centre
must seek to serve the needs of the local community as a whole
and not become an expensive facility for the privileged and the
elite.
The most ambitious of the schemes offered by Dr Brule and
his team of educateurs is a job-provision programme. With
the help of a grant from the Ministry of Employment he and his
team undertook a study to identify new jobs with new skills and
new qualifications which would be needed on the site. After
identifying four main areas of work, including maintenance and
the reception of visitors, they proceeded to offer training over
nine months to 75 young people who had left without
qualifications, and who had been unemployed for at least two
years. The policy was one of reverse discrimination, turning
away anyone who had qualifications and who had been in w9rk and
seeking out the 'hard cases' from unemployment and clubs
de prevention. After the nine months, 60 of those who completed the
course were offered a permanent job.
20
t
To those already labelled delinquent by the courts, La
Villette offers two separate schemes. The first is for young
people under a Travail a l'interet general
order (community service). At any one time La Villette accepts
between three and fiye TIGISTS. Since the inception of the
scheme 25 have served their orders at La Villette of whom three
have been offered permanent jobs. Several others, according to
Dr Brule, have maintained links with the centre by doing
voluntary work there. The other scheme involves a week's
course on 'The Meaning of Technology' for young peop+e
referred by clubs de prevention and education
surveillee (the court social workers). Technology is taught
through the understanding of objects to which young people
can relate, rather than as an abstract science. The 60
young people who attended the recent series of courses were
each given the parts of a 'Walkman', with talks about how
magnetic tape works and how sound is produced and
transmitted. At the end of the week they were allowed to keep
the 'Walkman' that they had assembled during the course.
As its contribution to the wider population of local young
people, La Villette offers 'outreach' and 'referral'
schemes as part of its crime prevention policy. Children
and young people who come to the centre in the school holidays,
because they have nothing better to do with their time than to
hang around the gardens and entrance halls, soon discover
from the guides and security officers that they can obtain free
entrance tickets if they make contact with an educateur
in the foyer of the museum and if they agree to fill in a short
questionnaire about their reasons for coming to La Villette
and their reactions to what they find there. Dr Brule
explains that security officers, who had been specially trained
in preventative work, spotted groups of children who kept on
coming back to the centre to hang around. Through the
questionnaires, which they completed in return for entrance
tickets, it was possible to identify the part of the city they
came from and to contact those responsible for crime prevention
i.n the local authority areas concerned. The response of these
areas was to deploy part-time educateurs at La Villette with the
specific purpose of making contact with the children from their
area and telling them of the holiday activities that were
available to them closer to home.
In the opposite direction, so to speak, Dr Brule iictively
seeks exceptional young people living in neighbouring areas and
tries to involve them in the activities of the centre by giving
them invitations to events and free tickets to concerts. Some
are ~ f f e r e d the additional incentive of part-time work. His
objective is that these 'leaders' should act as intermediaries,
bringing in other youngsters from the locality who would not
normally visit the centre. Once they are there and a
relationship has been established between them and the crime
prevention social workers, those with specific problems, such as
drug-addiction, can be referred to other agencies for help, while
21
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)
others are able to talk over their difficulties with an
educateur. The importance of this service is recognised by
the local court social workers (education surveillee) who
no.; assign one of their workers to permanent secondirient at La
Villette.
As far as relations with the police are concerned, Dr
Brule operates a dual'policy. On the one hand, he and his
team do not hesitate to call in the police to deal with trouble-
makers from outside On the other hand, those children and young
people who are participating in a training programme or course
at the centre are r e g a r d e ~ as 'guests': 'Not only should they
be welcomed here, but they should be specially treated in a
good way'. This means, in practice, that if any of them are
caught stealing or damaging equipment (a very rare occurrence)
the matter is dealt with internally without referral to the
police.
While La Villette is unlike any other place in France, its
crime prevention policy nevertheless shares many common features
with those operated by towns and cities throughout the country.
There is the concept of 'partnership' between the local
community and the APSV and between the APSV and central
Government in the form of the Ministries of Social Services,
Employment and Justice. Three groups of partners contribute
equally to the Association's running costs: central Government,
the neighbouring local authorities and those private and state
bodies involved Ln organising activities and exhibitions at La
Villette. There is also the general policy that prevention is
cheaper than paying for damage and more effective than
repression. According to Dr Brule
'Prevention should not be stuck away in a corner; it
should be hammered into everyone's heads that it is
part of a service people owe to those less fortunate
than themselves.'
He is convinced that many private companies would be only too
willing to participate in crime prevention programmes, if
only someone would tell them what they should be doing.
LES MISSIONS LOCALES (YOUTH CENTRES)
The most important perm anent organisational structure to
be set up as part of the crime prevention policy is that of the
Missions Locales. In the report on the employment and
social integration of young people. ('L'insertion
professionnelle et sociale des jeunes'), presented to the
prime minister in 1981, Professor Bernard Schwartz wrote:
'The restoration
opportunities for
necessity.'
This, he
organisation
believed,
easily
of employment and social
young people is a matter of urgent
required the
accessible
22
creation of
to young
a permanent
people which
)
mobilised all
political forces
people themselves.
social,
and
economic,
involved the
administrative
participation of
and
young
A government Ordonnance of February 1982 provided the legal
framework for such an organisation. Within the next 18 months 87
missions locales wer.e created, coordinated and encouraged
by a national mission (Delegation
interministerielle a l'insertion professionnelle et sociale
des jeunes en difficulte. There are now 100 missions
operating in all French cities and almost all the large towns
(see map, page 8 ) . As in the case of the Crime Prevention
Councils, the initiative for the creation of a local mission
comes from the commune. The Delegation then decides
whether to install a mission in the area, using as its main
criteria the level of youth unemployment and the willingness of
the various local bodies to work together.
The purpose of the missions is twofold. Firstly, tney provide a
place for young people between the ages of 16 and ~ 5 to
discuss problems of job training, employment, accommodation
and finance with people with the knowledge and expertise to
propose solutions and help to put them into effect.
Secondly, they bring together a wide range of local
individuals and organisations (counsellors, government
departments, charities, employers, trades unions etc) and
work with them and with the young people themselves in
seeking appropriate and innovative solutions to problems of
employment, training and everyday life.
According to the Director of the mission locale at Lille,
'clients' tend to come from those who have left school at
16 without any formal qualifications. Some of them are
barely literate and numerate and the school careers advisory
service (Conseils d'orientation) does very little for them. The
mission uses its local contacts to find them places on training
schemes, including literacy courses,with the eventual goal of a
permanent job.
The other important aspect of the Lille Mission's
carried out by the Lille Help for Projects
(Commite lillois d'aide aux projets) which the Mission
work is
Committee
set up. This Committee, consisting ofrepresentatives from adult
and youth organisations in roughly equal nunbers, has the task of
considering ideas for projects proposed by young people
themselves. The procedure is simple and unbureaucratic. Any
young person, or group of young people, not in permanent .
employment may propose a project and request a grant to enable
the project to be realised. The professional staff of the
mission locale will discuss the project with the individual or
group and help to cost it and set it out in a written
application. The project is then discussed at a meeting of the
Committee. These are informal gathering; where the
proposer(s) of r.he project defends it against critical comments
and where the committee members also make positive suggestions as
23
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to how the project might be improved and who might be approached
for the financing. Once approved, the project will go before
the CCPD with a recommendation for part or full financing.
The process is likely to take between three and six
months.
The Director of the Lille Mission considers this encouragement
to young people to create their own projects a vital part of the
Mission's work:
"In spite of your
you interest us".
young person is
'You're telling them,
and your difficulties,
their confidence. The
That's what's important.'
limitations
It builds up
recognised.
Among the projects to be financed in 1986 was a theatre workshop
involving young people from French and North African origins who
use theatre as a means of better understanding each other's
culture; organisation of monthly 'bourns' (young people's dance
parties), including the provision of a hall and publicity
throughout the guartier; the creation of a sports club by a
group of young people in a deprived area of the city with a
reputation drug problems; organisation of a campir.g holi-
day in the Ardeche; and a 3tudy holiday in Aviguon.
The essential elements of the missions locales are, as with
many of the French crime prevention structures, firstly a
local, broadly based organisation with tentacles reaching
out to professional workers in the guartier and, through them,
to the young people themselves. At Lille, as elsewhere, this
consists of a management committee (Conseil d'Administration)
with local politicians and representatives from the chamber of
commerce, trades unions, government departments, charitable
bodies and pressure groups involved with young people. The
professional staff is deployed throughout the city. Each
guartier has a worker assigned to it with a central office
near the city centre.
Secondly, there is the joint financing. For the mission
locales, comes from the commune and 507. from central
Government. Thirdly, there is a small central Government
office which coordinates and finances the local offices, but
which does not in any way interfere with their operation.
To evaluate the achievements of the missions locales is a
difficult task. Clearly, a large number of young people pass
through their doors. Lille alone has dealt with some 6,500
cases since its inception four and a half years ago. It is also
clear thanks to the efforts of the missions. many
training opportunities and some permanent jobs have been
created throughout France. The figure quoted for combined
training and work experience places was 100,000. More
important than the statistics, however, are the effects the
introduction of the missions have had as raising the level of
consciousness among politicians, civil servants, employers and
trades unions concerning the immense difficulties faced by the
24
)
system as
positive
to be
many young people who emerge from the education
failures; and helping to give these young people a
self-image by encouraging them to take initiatives,
creative and by rewarding their efforts.
PROJECTS IN AND AROUND LILLE
School Safety: Lille
This project had two main objectives :
to tackle the growing problems of bullying and violence _in
schools and car accidents involving children on their way to
and from school;
to provide job training for young people who had left
school without qualifications and whose view of schools and
teachers was almost entirely negative, in order to boost their
self confidence.
This involved
Education, a
disseminating
the Lille CCPD.
cooperation between the Department
voluntary organisation involved mainly
information on drugs and their dangers
of
in
and
The Association devised the project and obtained funding from
the CCPD and CNPD. Its first step was to contact those agencies
in the city, such as the Mission Locale and clubs de
prevention, seeking recruits among unemployed young people
without formal qualifications. Those selected were taken on as
TUCISTS that is, trainees under the government youth
training scheme Travail a l'Utilite Communal - and given
an eight day initial training programme on a number of
specific issues concerning children and adolescence,
including the formal education system, the psychology of
adolescence, drugs, deviancy and road safety.
Each of the recruits was 'contracted' to a school and
instructed to undertake a study and devise a project
concerning a particular problem that the school was
experiencing. The school, for its part, entered into a contract
with the Association to accept the TUCISTS for six months and
to help them fulfil their contract. Follow-up training was
organised each month when all the TUCISTS would discuss their
experiences at the school where they worked. Examples of the work
undertaken by the TUCISTS at the schools to which they were
assigned include :
Building a model of the neighbourhood and explaining to young
children who came to school on their own the danger spots and
how to avoid accidents.
Assisting the professional Surveillants who watch over the
older children during breaks and immediately before and
after school. The TUSCIST would follow up incidents of
25
_)
bullying or fighting, question the participants and try
to find out the reasons for the violence. He or she would
then work with school staff to reduce these incidents.
Results: The TUCISTS participating in the scheme each received a
Diploma as Securiste and a party was held at which members of the
CCPD attended the presentation of diplomas. This was the first
time that most of young people had received any official
recognition of their work.
There was a marked reduction in violence in
had employed TUCISTS. The teachers also
TUCIST acted as a useful intermediary
and the pupils, increasing the willingness
problems with them.
Some schools were so impressed by
initiative displayed by the TUCISTS that
those schools which
reported that . the
between themselves
of pupils to discuss
the knowledge and
they sent their
Surveillants (who often have no formal training) to the
Association on a training course similar to that given to the
TUCISTS.
Operation Metro: Lille
Lille has the . most recently constructed underground
railway in Europe. Opened only three years ago, its unstaffea
trains travel between bright, spacous "stations around the
city. Crime prevention considerations were an important
element in the design and planning of the Lille Metro.
platforms, for instance, are separated from the tracks by
glass doors which open only when the train arrives, so
minimising the risk of the snatch-and-run handbag thieves who for
a time so plagued the Paris Metro.
However, the very fact that the stations are so attractive
produced its own problems. At Place Rihour in the city centre,
the Metro station and the surrounding square soon became a
meeting place for young 'drifters', many of whom would spend. the
entire day hanging around the Metro entrance. The concern
they evoked among the Metro administrators and security
was not related to any serious crkme
problem. They did not steal from or attack travellers. Yet it
was something more than the discomfort they caused by their often
outlandish punk or hippy appearance and the threat they presented
to middle-class values of hard work, order and respectability.
People were frightened by them, the elderly.
Travellers were offended by their begging and soliciting for
Metro which they would then resell. More seriously,
some members of the 'inner circle', that hard core of between 15 -
tc 20 young people aged between 17-23 who more or less made the
Place Rihour their home, were distributing drugs to other
youngsters, the more casual Rihour frequenters, who turned up
during the school holidays and at weekends. Some of the inner
circle were also drug, alcohol and solvent abusers.
26
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L
These facts were uncovered by an Association (AIDE)
which was asked by the Metro administration to
carry out a study of the situation at Place Rihour. As a result
of this study it was decided that some action had to be taken to
prevent Place Rihour becoming a 'mini Piccadilly Circus'. The
solution proposed by the Association was to devise a project that
involved the 'inner circle' and which would take them away
from their present negative occupation of 'hanging around'.
Once the 'inner circle' had been dispersed, the 'casuals', it
was believed, would also disappear. This project was to take the
form of a play to be written and performed by members of the
inner circle under the direction of a professional theatre
director. It was an imaginative and original response
which was specifically directed at the need of young people to
perform and exhibit themselves before an audience, which found
expression in their 'outlandish' dress and disturbing behaviour.
The project was thus based on the idea that by reconstructing
the self-image of these young people and the image they presented
to others, one could alter their behaviour and help them to
direct their energies into constructive channels.
Its objectives were :
To use the medium of theatre to help them understand their
own 'performance', their need to dress up and a
fantasy world for themselves to differentiate themselves from
the world of the 'spectators', those members of the public
using the Metro. This appreciation of the
'performance' and fantasy elements in their behaviour
would, it was hoped, help to reconcile these young people
with the society which they believed had rejected them and
which they, in their turn, had rejected.
To provide them with an engrossing activity which would not
only keep them occupied, but which would also demand a level
of commitment and self-discipline from them. Participating
in the play would be incompatible with continued drug or
alcohol abuse. If successful, the final performance would
give them a sense of achievement and a positive self-
esteem which many of them had lacked hitherto.

To improve their physical condition by
day and offering help with hygiene,
problems.
providing two meals a
and drug
To pay them sufficient 'wages' during the period of
rehearsal for them to avoid the need to beg, solicit or deal
in drugs in order to survive. The additional effect of paying
wages would be to establish a relationship for the first
time in their lives between work and money.
To use the contact established through the medium of the play
to make help available to them by involving social workers
in the project who could offer assistance with
accommodation, drug problems, relationships with family
27
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and work training programmes.
Finance and personnel secondments for the project were obtained
from the Mission, Point Jeunes and Education
Surveillee. A professional actor/director from a local
theatre group was hired for a period of two months. He then
set about recruiting members of the inner circle by offering
them six-week contracts. Those who accepted agreed to work
every week day and to attend anevening 'briefing supper' when the
day's work and the plans for the next day would be discussed.
The contract included an undertaking to report for work in a
fit condition to play their parts. It was made clear to them
by the director that he was not concerned with their personal
problems; his interest in them was confined to the eventual
public performance of the play and that this would not be
possible if they failed to appear for rehearsals or were so
intoxicated they could not act.
The results of the project more than fulfilled expectations.
Of course, there were problems and set-backs. By no means all
the inner circle wanted to participate. Some failed to keep to
their contractual obligations. Indeed, it became clear
after a short time that a live theatrical performance was too
ambitious an objective, so it was modified to a video drama.
There were disputes about the rate of pay and more particularly
about the fact that the director was being paid five times more
than his cast members. Yet, despite these difficulties, tney
succeeded in producing a video drama lasting about ten minutes
which had its premier before an invited audience of
councillors and professionals in the crime prevention field.
It is the story of a group of young people living and hiding in
a Metro station. The Metro managers decide that this
situation cannot be tolerated and so call in the police. A
major police raid follows with dramatic results. (19) Of the
dramatic results of the project, perhaps the most striking was
the change in appearance between the 'punks' and 'hippies' who
had agreed to taka part in the project and the young 'actors' who
turned up at the premier clean and conventionally dressed to
answer questions and discusss the project. It was as if they no
longer needed the 'persona' of an outsider once they had been
given some recognition by the 'straight' world.
So far as the effects on crime were concerned, with the
disappearance of the inner circle, Place Rihour ceased to be a
meeting place for the city's drifters. As for the members of
this circle, most no longer hang around the city centre. Some_
have returned to their families. Others have found accommodation
through the help they received from social workers attached to .
the project. Those who asked for it were given help with their
drug and alcohol related problems. Moreover, four of the inner
circle were sufficiently integrated to be given places on work
training schemes. Of all the young people contacted in Place
Rihour during the project's duration, 37 found places on youth
training schemes.
28
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Now, some two years later, new groups of young people have
started to form around the Place Rihour Metro, A year
round service involving two animateurs and two TUCISTS has been
set up to help them with medical, financial and
accommodation problems.
Vehicle Service : Lille
This is an example of a cooperative, semi-commercial enterprise
started by a Maison de guartier (social centre) to provide
training for young people in the area. It began with concern
expressed by the workers at the social centre that
disadvantaged young people are the least likely to find
apprenticeship or training schemes leading to the 9ossibility
of employment. Moreover, even if they were successful in
finding a place, they were less likely than other young people
to benefit from the training because of their problems in
self-discipline or lack of literacy and numeracy skills and
because of a lack of time and expertise among employers to
provide training geared to their needs. The centre, therefore
decided to put on its own training courses in motor mechanics
and car body repairs. This was an area of work which was known
to be of interest to many young people leaving school without
qualifications. With the help of grants from Education
Surveillee and the Conseil General of the Departement, a
garage was purchased and equipped and a service station
started on a commercial basis under the direction of a youth
worker from the centre. The service station employs a full-
time qualified mechanic who gives training courses in motor
mechanics and car body repairs to three young people at time
who work on customers' vehicles. A fourth receives training
on the secretarial side of the business. The young people
given places on the courses are referred to the garage by
agencies such as Education Surveillee or the Mission Locale.
These are young people with special difficulties without formal
qualifications. A serious problem with this arrangement is that
the organisers have no control over the recruitment process. In
fact, they are obliged to take on those young people who are
to them. The Ministry of Industry and Employment made
per capita payments for each young person taken on as a
trainee for an 18 rn6nth period.
Of the five young people who were taken on since the project
began in April 1986, there have been two clear 'successes'.
One has since received a certificate of professional
as a motor mechanic. One has been accepted on a two year
secretarial course. A third is continuing his training at the
service station.
The service station encountered difficulties in the first two
years of its operation mainly because of cuts in its budget
brought about by the new government in late 1986. This resulted
in the suppressing of the post of educateur to help the
trainees with their behavioural and social problems. As a
result, the management has decided to put on shorter courses of
29
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nine months for iS trainees. This would enable the service
station to have a more rapid turnover of trainees and place it on
a sounder financial footing. However, because no
educateur is now attached to the project it will not be able
to take such difficult young people as before.
Cafe without Alcohol : Lille
"
Les Moulins is a run-down area of the city, the site of the old
cotton mills long since closed. Many of the houses are in a
dilapidated state. Some have been completely abandoned, their
shutters permanently closed. Apart from a few old people,
the traditional working-class inhabitants have moved away,
leaving behind them a cultural desert which only immigrants
and the poorest section of the indiginous population now
inhabit. It is an area suffering from multiple social
problems associated with urban decay. Not least of these is
alcoholism.
The Maison de quartier, the local social centre, is a focus of
activity for children and young people. As Andre Dupon, the
young director, explains, the free creche and summer
activities for children attract children of all races, but it is
teenagers from North African backgrounds who monopolise the
centre in the evenings. He and his fellow workers point out
that there is nothing in the area for young people. There are a
few cafes which cend to be frequented by adults, many of whom are
alcoholics. Alcoholism arising from having nothing to do and no
real prospects is becoming a problem among the young. They,
together with professionals working with young people in the
area, proposed opening a cafe serving non-alcoholic
beverages with a games room at the rear. The proposal had
three objectives:
(i) Crime-prevention Through a reduction in alcohol abuse
among young people, there could be a reduction in some
crimes, especially those involving violence and
dangerous driving.
(ii)Economic: The cafe would provide full-time
permanent employment for two young people. In addition
the building works necessary for converting the premises
would provide training in building techniques and
house decoration for 14 TUCISTS.
(iii)Socio-educative The cafe which would be situated
j u s ~ off the central square which contains the college
(high school) would be a meeting place for young: people.
Musical evenings, ~ video screenings, photographic
exhibitions e t ~ could be held there. Young people would be
attracted to the place by the pin-ball and electronic games
and by the background of rock music.
An Association was formed to seek funding for the
and to run the project. Finance was forthcoming from
different sources including the City of Lille, social
30
proposal
several
services,
)
the Conseil Regional and the
as the CCPD. At present,
building which the mairie
project. The cafe is due to
Drugs and Football : Lille
'
Conseil General as well
building works are in progress
have put at the disposal of
open in the winter of 1987.
in a
the
Les Craignos is an Association running a youth centre in
Wazemme, a suburb of Lille with a large population of North
African origins. The centre itself is staffed by animateurs,
young people in their twenties who come from the surrounding
neighbourhood. During the last five years the nature of drug
abuse has changed in the district. Increasingly it is young
people who are becoming addicted and this has been accompanied
by a steady increase in death, illness and social isolation due
to drugs.
Among the causes of drug abuse among young people, the
workers at Les Craignos identify school failure, unemployment
affecting the young person or a member of the family, lack
of prospects, identity crisis, racism and the marginalisation
of ethnic groups, lack of positive role models, poor information
on the effect of drugs, the presence of drugs in the immediate
environment, personality problems, and idleness.
The project proposed by Les Craignos to deal with the
problem was to use young people's interest in football as a
focal point for the centre's anti-drug work. The short-term
proposal was to create a link in the minds of young people
between football and the rejection of drugs. The method
was to feature the Craignos football team on two posters with the
slogans: 'Quand on shoot c'est dans le but!' (When we 'shoot'
it's into the and 'Nous, les jeunes de Wazemme, guand on
se defence, c'est au foot!' (When we, the young of wazemme,
get high, it's playing football!). These posters were stuck
up all over the guartier and their impact on young people
measured by a questionnaire survey. In addition, the young
people who join one of the centre's football teams are given
information on the damaging effects of drugs as part of their
football training.
The medium-term objective has been to make contact with the
local first division club and persuade them to produce posters
featuring local professional players and members of Les
Craignos team with, of course, appropriate The
long-term project, w,hich is being realised this year, is to
produce a similar poster with the cooperation of the French
national team. These posters will qe distributed throughout
France.
31
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Another important part of the project was to organise a
camping holiday which would take the football team on tour
playing youth teams in other major French cities. The tour
would also serve to disseminate and obtain information about
drug-abuse prevention and culminate with a football festival at
Lille.

The total cost of these proposals was 8,500 and funding
was obtained from the CCPD, the CNPD, the city of Lille,
social services, the inter-departmental commission against
drug abuse, Education Surveille and AIQE. (see page 27)
Rubaix : Combat Sports
Roubaix is one of three towns that form a densely populated
connrbation in the North West of France. The effects of the
recent economic depression and the subsequent urban decay have
been worse at Roubaix than at Lille and Tourcoing. The crime
level at Roubaix has been particularly high in recent years and
the city is renowned in the North West as being a dangerous
place to live.
The present project was directed at 'gangs' of young people
who were glue-sniffing in a very ostentatious manner in an open
car park adjoining a school. The police had intervened
several times, but had not been to lay any criminal
charges against any of the gang's members. However, the
immediate response to each intervention by the police was acts
of directed against cars and local buildings.
The school and car park are situated in a part of the city
which is socially deprived, with considerable
unemployment and a strong concentration of North African
immigrants. It is an area with all the elements of insecurity,
including a divided population both between young people and
elderly adults, and between French and North Africans.
The local swimming pool also create problems by attracting
gangs from other parts of the city.
The Association, had already been
conjunction with Education Surveillee, on an
basis with a number of local drug abusers.
upon by the local school to see if it could
constructive solution to the problem.
involved, in
individual
It was called
propose some
AIDE undertook a period. of observing the behaviour of
young people who spent their time hanging around the car park.
Its workers found that the use of solvents, hashish and
occasionally heroin served as medium for social and economic
exchange and conviviality among the groups of young people
of between L3 and L9 years old. Meetings with regular herotn
users were by chance and infrequent.
They also discovered
behaviour of these young
that the most important factor in the
people was violence. It served in an
32
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open, almost ritualistic manner as a
the 'pecking-order' within each gang,
between gangs and as the only means of
adult population of the area.
way of establishing
as a common language
!communication' with the
The AIDE workers decided that at all costs
public panic over "the use of drugs had to be avoided as this
would result in the short-term solutions of bringing in
drug-addiction specialists to deal with the problem and in a
resurgence of police action. Neither of these responses would
deal with the underlying problems which would merely reappear
later in other forms. They took the view, therefore, that the
most appropriate response would be to concentrate on the
phenomenon of violence.
The proposal was to establish an alternative activity which
would be 'marginal' yet not deviant, violent but not destructive,
where they would be able to have contact with adults in a non-
violent, non-repressive manner. The idea of combat sports
(boxing, wrestling, martial arts) seemed to be the appropriate
solution. However, it would be a mistake to expect these young
people to J01n local clubs, as this would mean for them a
renunciation of their identity and an unacceptable integration in
main-stream society. What was needed, therefore, was activities
which would take place at a time and a place where they would
be.
With the help of the local authority and the local school, the
school offered to provide facilities on its premises. The police
also offered to organise some activities. Each activity had a
minimum of two organisers, one responsible for the technical
aspects of the sport, while the other provided social
work help. The social worker, however, also participated in
the sport. There was no direct intervention by drug specialists.
Within a few weeks of the start of the project in 1985, demand
exceeded supply. Combat sport activities took place daily at
midday and in the evening and were attended by an average of 70
to 80 young people.
While the use of taxies has not disappeared entirely,
violent confrontations have ended and the young people taking
part in the activities have started to discuss their
problems spontaneously with the adult organisers.
33
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V DISCUSSION
The response of many readers to this paper will no doubt be:
'All this is very well, but does it actually prevent crime?'
A simple answer would be that the French criminal
statistics indicate over the past two years of the type
of offence likely to be committed by young people, such as
criminal damage, theft, taking cars and minor assaults. As a
crime in France has fallen by during this period with
a fall of over between 1985 and 1986. (20) In Lille, whose
crime prevention programme for young people has been examined in
some detail in this report, there has been a fall of almost
127. between 1985 and 1986, (21) a much sharper decrease than
in the surrounding areas not covered by the city's crime
prevention council.
Yet, to
initiative
fall into
measure the effects of a major long-term
purely in terms of official crime statistics
the positivist trap of assuming that :
policy
is to
crime can be neatly isolated from other forms of behaviour;
the changes in criminal statistics are necessarily caused
by changes brought about by the new policy.
A more reliable indication of the impact of changes in policy
through the use of the official crime statistics is the fact
that over the summer months petty crime in all major French
cities has declined from year to year since the introduction of
the ete-jeunes activities. (22) Although other factors
might be at play, the most likely explanation for this is the
fact that children who have a high risk of engaging in
delinquent behaviour if left to wander the streets are now either
involved in organised activities in the city or away from the
city altogether in holiday camps.
However, there is a major objection in using crime statistics as
a measure of success or failure of the French programme. It
is that the objectives of of the projects are long-term
ones aimed at social integration and job acquisition as
well as building confidence and a positive self image rather
than at an illlll8diate cut in crime. The effects, for example, of
involving eight to ll year olds from North African origins in
activities organised by the local council for !!! children in
the area may be that, by the time they have reached 13 to 16,
they have sufficient confidence in themselves and in their
neighbours, of whatever race or religion, to propose their own
projects and obtain funding for them from the council. As a
representative from the Departemental Social Services office
commented when showing an inter-ministerial ceam of inspectors
around the ete-jeunes activities on a mainly immigrant
housing estate
'It took three years before we saw any real
progress.
]4
)
)
After the first year we despaired.
in.'
Now even the girls join
If the French are right about the underlying causes of
crime, the real benefits of the present policies will be
five or more years from now.
'
youth
felt
For evidence of more immediate effects one could point to the
broad racial mix among the children and young people
participating in the various projects and witness the enthusiasm
which they exhibit in their involvement in projects which they
themselves have devised. Moreover, the fact that, apart from.the
demonstrations last year against reforms to the education system,
France has since 1981 had no inner-city disturbances, or violent
confrontations between young people and the police. This would.
seem to indicate a degree of social harmony and cohesion among
the young which the United Kingdom might well envy.
The contrast between the policies of the French and British
Governments towards the problems posed by youth crime are so
obvious as to need no further comment. One additional
comparison between them which could usefully be explored here,
however, concerns the methods of putting policies, whatever they
might be, into practice. The basic difference between the two
countries is that the French have what one might call a
'programme-driven' approach, while the British way of doing
things is very much 'project-driven'.
The French crime prevention programme is based on the concept
of geographical proximity. This means ~ 1 1 , or almost all,
crime control agencies, local and central government
departments and voluntary agencies having jurisdiction over a
certain specified area and cooperating with local elected
councillors to provide the stimulus in terms of funding,
resources and expertise for projects to be generated. If
imaginative and effective projects emerge, they are welcomed and
supported by all the local 'partners'. This is not to say that
local initiatives never occur in the United Kingdom. Clearly,
they do, but because the commmitment to them is often partial or
non-existent among other agencies not directly involved, or among
police officers or one of the opposing local political parties,
their chances of achieving their objectives are often very slim.
Take, for example, a project which aims to improve the self-image
and self-confidence of those who leave school without
qualifications. Such a proJect is unlikely to be successful if
youngsters who participate are continually being prosecuted for
minor offences. Thus a local education authority's po!icy of
reporting to the police every incident of broken windows or
graffiti sprayed on school walls may well run quite contrary to
the objectives of the project and directly interfere with the
project's work in respect of certain young people. In other
words, if there is no consensus locally about the needs of these
young people or on how best to react to minor acts of
del inquence, the project, which might well be well-conceived,
imaginative and well-executed by its organisers.
35
)
might nevertheless fail in the case of certain individuals.
Worse still, the prosecution of these offenders might well
'prove' to those who opposed the project in the first place that
it is not working and should therefore be abandoned.
Perhaps this scenario is a little simplistic, but it is not
totally The problem, therefore, with a
project-driven approach is firstly that it creates within the
same area a collage of different attitudes to juvenile crime and
different, often contradictory responses within a single
geographical area. Secondly, in order to attract funding and
support, particularly from government sources, the promoters
of projects have to accept criteria of success or failure related
to the immediate effects of the project on the incidence of crime
in the area in general, or on the incidence of certain types of
offence. Such criteria, as we have seen, may have as much to do
with the attitudes of others towards the methods and objectives
of the project as with any changes brought about in the self-
image and, ultimately, the behaviour of young people taking part.
Thirdly, the mere fact that such projects are seen as pilots or
experiments places pressure on the project organisers not only to
accept such inappropriate short-term measures of success or
failure, but also to 'play safe' and propose only projects which
stand some chance of meeting these imposed standards.
The project-driven approach is, of course, an extension of
individual positivism in that it is based on the idea that
discrete causes of a person's criminal behaviour can be
identified, isolated and treated and that such treatment will
result in eliminating or reducing that behaviour.
The French programme-driven approach turns its back on individual
positivism by attempting to provide a local environment which
encourages the generation of schemes for young people and their
continuation for an extended period, regardless of their
immediate effect on crime figures and regardless of whether
individuals taking part commit further offences. Indeed, many of
the French projects described in this paper would never have
received funding or would have been killed off in their infancy
if positivistic criteria had been applied to them.
France's crime prevention programme, as we have seen, has
been remarkably successful in uniting the mainstream political
parties of both right and left and in , generating
cooperation among government departments, both centrally and
locally, and between the state and charitable organisations. It
is as if 'Crime Prevention' has become the pass-word which has
enabled all manner of doors to be opened :and all kinds of
barriers to be lowered. It has also provided local politicians
with a focus for their policies and, at the same time,
them into contact with individuals and organisations who have a
close understanding of the problems of the young and the reasons
why they drift into criminal behaviour. As Mme. Alfarobba,
Director of Crime Prevention at Clichy, put it, 'It's proved to
be a very good training for elected representatives'. This
applies equally to the mayors of towns, many of whom sit as
36
Members of the French Parliament, as to local councillors.
If one wished to take a more phlegmatic view of French crime
'
prevention, one could argue that much, but not all, of what
happens in France under this banner also occurs under different
banners in the United Kingdom and in other Western countries.
France is not u n i ~ u e in having urban renewal programmes,
community service orders, youth training schemes and diversionary
programmes for young offenders. One could argue in the same
vein that what has happened since 1981 is that a bandwagon
has been created which pre-existing organisations and
institutions have been only too happy to jump on to in order to
gain from the considerable financial investment in preventative
measures and to obtain status and security for themselves and
their members. None of this, however, detracts from the very real
achievements that have been gained, both in terms of cohesion and
cooperation towards a common end and in terms of the results,
that is the lowering of crime rates for petty crime in many areas
both in comparison with previous periods and with areas not
) subscribing to prevention policies.
)
What then have been the main planks which have
provided the solid base to the rather nebulous concept of social
crime prevention? We would suggest the following
A clearly conceived youth policy aimed at providing
training programmes and eventual employment, particularly
for those young people who leave school without
qualifications, and responding to the needs and initiatives
of young people themselves in order to give them a positive
self-image and the feeling that their efforts will be
rewarded.

A policy of integration, but not assimilation, towards
immigrant communities. This involves actively encouraging
them to preserve their cultural identity and family and
community structures while, at the same time, offering in a
deliberate but unobtrusive way activities which will
interest young people and bring them into the mainstream of
French society.
Offering a wide range of activities to young people,
especially those from deprived backgrounds, not merely by
making these activities available to those who have the
motivation to participate, but seeking out' the most
isolated and more difficult children and adolescents and
providing additional incentives for them to take part,
whether in the form of a court supervision order or giving
them free places. The links here between court and street
social workers, clubs de prevention and the
activities mounted by social centres both within and outside
the ete-jeunes programmes are of particular importance.
37
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e The avoidance of criminal prosecutions as the only or most
favoured way of dealing with juvenile crime. Even
where prosecutions do take place, the policy among most
children's judges is to treat all but the most serious crimes
as symptoms of the need for some educative measure rather
than manifestations of evil or of individual or family
pathology. This 'allows young offenders to be treated as
people who need more encouragement and more help in social
adjustment and developing positive attitudes to
themselves and their rather than labelling them
and excluding them from opportunities and activities that are
open to others who have not been through the criminal justice
process. The special encouragement and assistance given
to those on superv1s1on orders, the clients of
Education Surveillee, through the provision of free
places on holiday projects and through the technology
programme put on for their benefit by La Villette are
examples of this policy. Another example is to
provide TIGISTS with work that gives them a sense of
fulfilment and may in some cases lead to permanent
employment. Moreover, the secondment of court social
workers to general projects involving young people avoids
the implication that they are in any way agents of the
court and that the help and friendship they offer is
tainted with the threat of possible criminal sanctions
should things go wrong.
A widely applied policy of g1v1ng young people responsibility
in order for them to develop a sense of achievement
and a positive self-image. This was most in evidence in
the Mission Locale's encouragement to the young unemployed
to propose a project, and the CCPD's willingness to back
recommended projects with funding and expertise. It was
also present in many of the summer programmes where
equipment and experienced help was provided, but it was
up to the young people themselves to decide how to use these
facilities.

Taking an analytical approach to crime prevention. Simple
solutions to problems of youth crime, such as'the use of
custodial measures or exhortations directed at schoolteachers
or find little favour among French politicians today.
Rather, the complexity of the causes of youth crime is
generally recognised, as is the need to base ,preventative
action on careful analysis of these causes within
specific geographical localities. A secondary effect of
the many groups that have been set up by CCPDs all over
France to study specific crime problems is that the police
and the courts are no longer the only or the main
source of information about levels of criminal behaviour and
its causes. Much information passing through the CCPDs is
picked up by local politicians and the mayor (who is
often also a Member of Parliament). It is this
information from those working with young people at grass-
root level which has played an important part the
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retention of the social crime prevention
the change in government.
policy despite
The creative and imaginative projects that have emerged,
such as the drama project at the Place Rihour Metre, the
Clichy holiday 'passport' and the School safety project at L;.u.,,
were the result of careful assessment of specific problems and
the search for a solution which would not only play a part in
reducing crime, but which would also meet the needs of young
people.
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(l) SeEil Wright V, 1978, The Government arrl Politics of France,
nui:chinson, Lorrlon
( 2) See Alain Peyrefitte ( chai:rnan), Response .a la violence - Rapport
de la Comite d'etudes sur 1a violence, la criminalite et la
vols l arrl 2, Presse Pocket, Paris 1977, val l, p217
(3) See reference 2
( 4) For a surrrrrary of the Bonnemaison Report see H-F Mecheri, 1 986,
Prevenir la delinguance: l'affaire de taus, Logiques Sociales,
L' Harrra ttan, Paris , Chapter 1
( 5) See Peyre V, 1986, Une nouvelle poli tique de prevention en France_,
1983-1985, Annales de Vaucresson, no. 24, p73
(6) See Peyre, op cit, note 5, p74
(7) Mecheri H-J, op cit, note 4, p59
(8) Interview with M. Pierre Bertran:i, Deputy Mayor of Lille, 18 May
1987
(9) Bonnemaison G, La securite en libertes, Syres, Paris, 1987
III
( 10) See Portet F, 'MS:Iias, detis urgences' , in Dubet et al, Ls
oJ?rations ete-jeunes, Centre Technique National d'etudes et de
recherche, Vanves, 1986, p168, arrl G Bonnemaison, op cit, note 9,
[)82
(11) See King M arrl Petit M-A, 1985, 'Thin stick arrl fat carrot- the
French Juvenile Justice System', 15, Youth & Policy, 26-31
(12) La,:eyronne G, 'Ls limites d'une strategie' in Dubet et al, op cit,
note 10, p174
(13) Portet F, op cit, note 10, p168
(14) op cit, note 11, p174
(15) op cit, note 11, p174
(16) Duprez o, Ls politigues d'ordre de la cite, CLERSE, Lille
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( 17) Mecheri H-F, op cit, note 4
(18) ~ e c h e r i H-F, op cit, note 4, p94
(19) Copies of the video drama an::l. of a television film concerning its
production can be obtained from AIDE, 9 rue du cirque, 59800 Lille
'
( 20) Statistics obtained from Ministere de 1' intedeur an::l. MinistE!re de
la defense
(21) Statistics obtained fran Conseil camtunal de Prevention de la
delinguance, Lille
(22) Dubet Fetal, 1987, op cit, piii
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