Organization of the French Police

The French Police consists of two highly centralized forces, the National Police and the National Gendarmerie. There is a further independent local force called the Municipal Police. Relations between the two major forces are often described as strained. The Municipal police force operates in theory alongside the National police and the National Gendarmerie. All the French police are armed.

The National Police is considerably larger then the Gendarmerie with some 116,300 officers and is responsible to the Ministry of the Interior. In addition to the uniformed and plain clothes police officers, there are about 10,000 civil support staff working for the National Police.

The National Police has executive and administrative functions which are split between the various units and services, for example: suppression of public disorder, road and motorway patrols, intelligence service, border and air control service, VIP security service. Drugs, vice and forensic work are often covered by specialist squads and there is also an anti-terrorist unit.

Within the National Police there are a few divisions for active policing:

- The Urban Police operates in the 477 big towns. Each district is controlled by a Commissar and consists of uniformed officers and a plain clothes detective and administration division. The tasks of the Urban Police division are to maintain law and order, public safety, security and salubrity, and traffic control.

- The Judicial Police deal with criminal, financial and economic cases.

- The Political Police of approximately 4,000 officers collect and collate information on individuals or groups who are regarded as constituting a danger to the state. Its plain officers are empowered to infiltrate organizations, collect information, tap telephones and open mail, subject to warrants.

- The State Security Service is concerned with the secret activities of foreign states operating in France.

- The Air and Frontier Police is responsible for movement of people across French borders and through airports. It works closely with the Customs Service which has responsibility for supervision of the movement of goods across the frontiers.

There are also other divisions of the National Police including para-military riot police and drug squad.

The National Gendarmerie is a military force under the control of the Ministry of Defence.

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Organization of the Italian Police

There are four separate police systems in Italy: the Carabinieri, the State police, the treasury police and the local community police.

In addition there are the Corps of Prison Warders and the Corps of Foresters. The latter is responsible for the protection of forestry and environment. In total there are some 302 police officers, giving one officer for every 191 people.

The Italian police all come under the authority of the Minister of the Interior who coordinates the activities of law enforcement agencies. The Minister is responsible for the maintenance of public order and safety, and the services of the Public Security Department are employed to enforce this authority. This department in turn is sub-divided into various departments and agencies headed by the Chief of the Italian Police.

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What are crimes?

It is very important to know which acts are criminal.

Offences against society

The most fundamental characteristic of a crime is that it is a punishable offense against society. Consequently, when a crime occurs, society, acting through such employees as the police and prosecutors, attempts to identify, arrest, prosecute, and punish the criminal. These measures are designed to protect society rather than to aid the victim of the crime. Victims of almost all crimes can sue identified criminals for civil damages, but seldom do because it is costly and difficult to collect from such defendants.

Elements of crimes

Before anyone can be convicted of a crime, three elements usually must be proved at the trial. They are:

1. a duty to do or not to do a certain thing;

2. a violation of the duty, and

3. criminal intent.

Duty. The duty to do or not to do a certain thing usually is described by statutes which prohibit certain conduct. Generally only conduct that is serious – involving violence or theft property – is classified as an offense against society and therefore criminal.

Violation of the duty. The breach of duty must also be proved in a criminal trial. This is the specific conduct by the defendant, which violates the duty. For example, battery is always a crime. Criminal battery is often defined in statutes as «the intentional causing of corporal harm». Corporal harm means bodily harm. A breach of this duty could be established in a trial by the testimony of witness who swore that she saw the defendant deliberately punch the victim.

Criminal intent. The third element, criminal intent, must be proved in most cases. Criminal intent generally means that the defendant intended to commit the act and intended to do evil.

A few crimes do not require criminal intent. These are generally less serious crimes, for which a jail sentence is very unlikely. Traffic offenses fall within this classification. You may not have intended to speed or have intended evil but you have still committed this crime.

Today, statutes of most states fix the age of criminal liability at 18, but the figure ranges from 16 to 19. Statutes often provide that minors as young as 13 or 16 may be tried and punished as adults if they are accused of serious crimes such as murder. Generally, however, what is a crime for adults is juvenile delinquency for minors.

Ignorance or mistake is generally no excuse for violating a law. A person is presumed to know what the law is. To have criminal intent, one must have sufficient mental capacity at the time one commits a crime to know the difference between right and wrong and to be capable of deciding what to do. Accordingly, insane persons are not held liable for their criminal acts.

Normally neither voluntary intoxication nor drug abuse is a good defense against a criminal charge.

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