International Journal on Criminology Volume 4, Number 2, Winter 2016 | Page 103

From Emergence to Institutionalization
From a quantitative viewpoint, the question of the influence of terrorism
on matters of security produces an interesting statistical analysis. This is possible
thanks to the Global Terrorism Database of the University of Maryland. 6 This tool
registers all terrorist acts committed from 1970 to today. It enables us to research
them and classify them according to various criteria which may be cross-referenced.
One of these criteria is of particular interest to us, that of the type of targets chosen.
Some rapid research shows us that between 2000 and 2014 (latest available year),
France was the victim of 331 terrorist-type attacks and that 87 of these were aimed
at economic activity. Thus, slightly over one quarter of terrorist targets in France
are persons or goods targeted as actors in a business activity. Moreover, in the same
period, 99 targets belong in a broad sense to public powers (State, police, justice, etc.)
The 145 other targets have to do with private interests. This last point is important
as one of the determining factors in the institutionalization of security management
lies, in our view, in the fact that public safety must now be seen as real public/private
cooperation.
For if there is any prerogative perceived as traditionally sovereign, it is that
which ensures the public security at the heart of a nation. The situation of western
countries, and of France in particular, must however incline us to recognize that
this security result very largely of a public/private partnership which has long been
promoted by the French State. For Xavier Latour (2010), the origins of this evolution
are to be found in the middle of the nineteenth century with the creation of a police
force specifically for the railways. But it was with the law of July 12, 1983 that
the French State acknowledged the importance of private security in France and
attempted to regulate the sector. The place of internal security departments (which
we shall here call security management) features very little in these texts, which no
doubt contributes to the relative lack of knowledge about the function. From this
point of view, the recent observation concerning Great Britain (White 2014) seems
to us equally applicable to France: the relative invisibility of security management
to the general public is largely because this activity is hardly regulated at all. The
fact remains that this great movement of skill transfers has been a powerful factor in
the institutionalization of security management. The status of Organizations of Vital
Importance (OIV) is the best illustration of this. French legislation on OIV status dates
from a ruling of 1958 which was heavily influenced by the necessities of the Cold War.
Road networks in particular were involved. But the law evolved considerably from
the beginning of the years 2000 to take into account the criminal and terrorist threats
(Galland 2010). Organizations whose activity was considered vital to maintaining
economic activity in France were required to do whatever was necessary to ensure
that their activity would not stop in any circumstances or would be maintained to a
sufficient extent. 7 This obligation, moreover, has for several years gone beyond mere
6
http://www.start.umd.edu/gtd/
7
Prime Minister, General Secretariat for Defense and National Security, Inter-ministerial general
instruction relating to the security of activities of vital importance, no.6600/SGDSN/PSE/PSN of
January 7, 2014.
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