Crime and State Surveillance in Nineteenth-Century France

Abstract

Historians and other social scientists argue that cultural change and increasing civility generated a five-century decline in rates of violent crime. This study presents a structural perspective that indicates that, as emerging nation-states consolidated power, they also extended surveillance, and this deterred cirme. The proposition is tested in France, between 1865 and 1913, where rates of major crimes declined and minor offenses increased as state surveillance expanded in the form of two national police forces. A time-series anlaysis suggests that, although the growth of policing initially increased charges for all types of crime, for major crimes the long-run effect was deterrence and declining rates. Subsequent deterrent effects failed to compensate for the initial inflationary effect on minor offenses, so rates increased. The effect of policing on major property crime holds when the possibility of reclassification of such crimes as minor offenses is controlled, but the deflationary effect of policing on major crimes of violence disappears when urbanization is introduced as a control. The other relationships persist, further supporting the idea that policing contributed to the decline in serious property crime. A reversal of the equations shows that crime rates had little or no effect on the growth of national policing. This, and historical evidence, suggests that state surveillance expanded less from a specific intent to control crime that from a broader interest in repressing "dangerous classes," new repertoires of social protest, and politcal challenge to the state.