online on the Crime, justice and other social issuesMay 2021.

"Police violence: a denial at the heart of the French State.
Never in half a century has France seen such an escalation in violence by the forces of law and order, while political leaders remain in denial. The proof is in the law on global security and its decried article 24.
In this book, Michel Kokoreff offers a genealogy of police violence, which has its roots in the colonial heritage of 1968 and continues today in police management of working-class neighbourhoods. He shows how this violence is rooted at the heart of the French state.
Against the theories of "blunder" and "the fault of one or a few individuals", he demonstrates that violence is part and parcel of the way the French police operate. He analyses the underlying rationale: the militarisation of the police, the political will to neutralise any form of dissent, the transformation of police unionism, the autonomy of rank-and-file police officers who impose their practices on the hierarchy, and the feeling of impunity".