International Journal on Criminology Volume 6, Number 1, Spring 2018 | Page 71

International Journal on Criminology
response strategies adapted to the hyper-complexity demonstrated by crises, which
force us to rethink our traditional frameworks of analysis. The “scientific reaction”
initiated by the president of the CNRS following the November 2015 attacks called
upon the whole scientific community to contribute to this response effort. This
initiative should include some fundamental thinking about crises, and how to prevent
and manage them. It would seem that this is also the desire of the Secrétariat
général à la defense et de la sécurité nationale (SGDSN) [Secretariat-General for
National Defense and Security] in the context of updating France’s anti-terrorist
security plan.
This rethink, accompanied by the development of various guides for professionals
and users, with the purpose of teaching them the rudiments of prevention
and management of major crises, marks an important stage in the evolution of
people’s mentalities, on the part of the authorities as well as of citizens. The authorities
could probably have gone further and brought in crisis specialists to help
produce these guides. The use of digital tools is also a source of innovation, not
only in the strategic domain of information, but also in the area of prevention and
crisis management. 8
Innovation and creativity are the keys that will enable us to respond to
the hyper-complexity produced by the “upsurge” of problems old and new: the
numerous actors (isolated individuals, organized groups managed from inside
France or from other countries); the multiple scenarios for possible attacks (attacks
with limited opportunity, wide-scale planned attacks on multiple sites or
one on top of another, shootings, hostage-takings, cyberattacks, booby-trapped
cars, booby-trapped parcels, ram-raiding cars, the use of toxic agents, and also
false alerts); and the diversity of potential targets (political, religious, or military
figures, representatives of the forces of order, gatherings of citizens, operators of
vital importance and sensitive sites, be they institutional, industrial, commercial,
or symbolic).
This complexity is also the consequence of contradictory injunctions, or a
double bind, which impose demands that are opposed to one another: demands
such as freedom and security, which take us back to the question of the durability
of the democratic system. These contradictory demands call for some deep
thought in order to adapt the response to a situation that is neither routine nor
a state of war in the traditional sense of inter-state conflict. To face up to these
whose strategic and political significance is fundamental. By comparison, the words “war” and
“terrorism” appear 30 and 23 times respectively. Different European treaties are just as silent on the
meaning of the term crisis, which seems to be interchangeable with the word “conflict.” In addition
to the need for both civil and military management of crises, the TFUE [Treaty on the Functioning
of the European Union] indicates only that “the combat force missions for crisis management,” like
other missions, “can contribute to the fight against terrorism” (Article 43).
8 The Paris Mayoral office has developed an innovation platform called Nec Mergitur, the result of a
public-private partnership. This platform, which is run by Paris & Co, provides an excellent example
of innovation: it allows the prevention and crisis management systems already in place to be
improved, as well as tools and new solutions to be developed.
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