The Legitimation of Penal Institutions
Policing has been encountered a legitimacy crisis since the end of the 20 century in France and abroad. It has been documented first by the development of urban riots and secondly by numerous public reports. Facing this questioning of police work, institutional answers have been imagined to bring about a democratisation of policing. Nevertheless, the professional model of policing which is deeply ingrained in the French police seems to constitute an insurmountable obstacle which inhibits such a transformation. What can we do then to make French police officers interested in their relationship with people? In this paper we will take a look back to a recent research led in cooperation with the French Ministry of Interior in order to improve in the local police the habit of studying public view about police work. We will present and discuss the project engineering we used but we will also emphasise the opportunity window that offered, by our opinion, the procedural justice turn in the specialised scientific field. In taking distance with substantial approaches of police legitimacy, the procedural approach seems to constitute a peaceful way to reduce police social isolation which represents a Gordian knot in the democratisation of policing.