La sécurité privée : le phénomène, la contreverse, l’avenir

This article deals with four themes on private security. First, private security is defined as a protection supplied to organizations targeting the specific needs of any given organization. Second, the expansion of private security is seen as resulting from the convergence between a real demand for security and a superior supply than the one offered by the police. Third, the article deals with questions regarding private security involving private live-Finally, it is argued that the future of private security lies in two trends : (1) technologicial integration and (2) sophisticated planning and problem solving

Les zones urbaines criminelles

The study of criminal areas has been a longstanding tradition in sociology and criminology. It had its hour of glory during the publication of the works of Shaw and McKay of the University of Chicago. In this article — which is an account of the studies on the concentration of criminals in urban areas — we show that, since the XIXth century, large metropolises have relatively stable sectors where the social control is weak and opportunities to commit crimes are numerous. Networks of juvenile delinquents and adult criminals develop in these areas, fostering the transmission of criminal solutions. The article contains a description of the process that leads to the emergence of a crime zone. It ends with a critique on ecological studies and by an appeal for the study of conflicts within these criminal networks

La lecture est-elle un dialogue?

Le concept de dialogue est utilisé de façon courante pour caractériser la lecture dans le champ des études sur la réception. Mais s’agit-il d’un terme vraiment approprié pour désigner cette activité ? À l’encontre de ce que soutiennent des penseurs comme Hans- Georg Gadamer ou Mikhaïl Bakhtine, Paul Ricoeur estime que le texte « transcende » la situation de dialogue. Bien qu’elle soit un défi critique, l’opinion de Ricoeur doit être considérée si l’on veut conserver le concept de dialogue parmi les concepts théoriques contemporains en sciences humaines.The concept of dialogue is a common occurence in the field of Reception theory. It is used as a way of defining our understanding of literature. But is the concept of dialogue really appropriate ? Can it help us describe the activity of reading ? Contrary to what H.-G. Gadamer and M. Bakhtine hold, for Paul Ricoeur nothing is less dialogical than the meeting of texts and interpreters. Ricoeur proposes a challenging counter-position to which I try here to respond in the light of the notion of dialogue as articulated by Gadamer and Bakhtine, hoping to secure the place of dialogical understanding in the arrays of contemporay theoretical concepts in the humanities

L’effet structurant du contrôle social

The paper deals with the following question. To what extent do the human efforts at controlling crime succeed ? It starts by proposing an enlarged concept of social control. In the second part, a theory of choices made by offenders under the constraint of social control is put forward. In the last part, it is argued that social control can have four types of impacts :I — reducing the frequency of crime; 2 — reducing its severity; 3 — rendering obsolete some criminal tactics and stimulating the development of new ones; and, 4 — channeling offenders toward vulnerable targets. It is concluded that crime is shaped by the means used to control it, meaning that a given state of crime rates should be seen as the result of what people decide to do and not to do about crime