[Risk and (in)security in the police mission]

This paper introduces a discussion on the history and use of the concepts of risk and security applied to the police officer's mission. The text is developed in an essay format that shows how both terms developed under the constitution of modern industrial societies. The authors begin with the assumption that the organizational structure of the police in various parts of the world retains the same logic since they were created during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and that this format is in crisis: whether it is because the concept of risk and current management thereof has now become much broader; or because the concept of security has also deepened and broadened, fleeing from the scope of the police institution. The crisis of the police apparatus is an international issue and the authors point to the case of the French police. Reverting to the thoughts of important authors in the sociological area, the authors resume the debate on some issues that they consider urgent: reformulation of the breadth of the concepts of risk and security to understand the police mission; enhancement of the police inside and outside corporations; review of the weight of the hierarchical rigidity or inflexibility on careers in a plural and flexible society.