Traumatisme

The urban violence scale: a tool for evaluating mobilisation capacities

In terms of risk, the scale of gravity is an essential component for following the evolution ofdanger over time or in the face of preventative measures. With respect to violence, the approach taken by Chief Commissioner BUI TRONG of the "Renseignements Généraux"( a branch of the French police force dealing with political security and domestic intelligence), and an alumnus of the Ecole Normale Supérieure(French High School), provides an essential contribution to the mastery of this risk.

The notion of a scale of urban violence was first identified in June 1991 by a national study of 800 neighbourhoods that were locally perceived as "sensitive", with a pragmatic policing view of the need to assess the risks of riots.

Over the years, it has made it possible to establish a map of the risk zones that is continually being updated, and to forecast the intensity or the absence of collective actions when an event takes place that is perceived as a tragedy or an injustice by the peer group occupying the public space of the neighbourhood.

1991 : Collective violence and the need to anticipate

Following the riot that took place in October 1990 at Vaulx-en-Velin (near Lyons), and with a succession of serious incidents that were continuing to take place in other "sensitive" neighbourhoods, the "Direction Centrale des Renseignements Généraux" wished to establish an inventory of the situation, in order to evaluate the extent and the nature of the risk of explosion (as well as the real or supposed risk of outbreaks of collective violence), to anticipate any new crises, and to participate in the search for suitable solutions.

First of all, it undertook an analysis of the triggering incidents: an event affecting one of the young people occupying the public space of his neighbourhood and immediately arousing the solidarity of his neighbourhood peers who perceived him as a "martyr" to whom they had to pay their respects. It also noticed that the riots had not happened "out of the blue", in areas where there were no precedents of daily violence. And it took note of the special profile of the "hard core" of the rioters: a minority of badly educated adolescents, with little schooling and little or no adult supervision, revolting against society and who often had become multiple offence petty criminals. Finally, it underlined the mechanisms leading to a rapid escalation of the level of violence, driven by emotional feelings of solidarity and fuelled by unverified rumours.

All these remarks seemed to indicate that, up to a certain point, it might be possible to anticipate such crises in sensitive neighbourhoods, providing attention was given to the incidents that were likely to trigger reactions, identifying the first signs of urban violence and the potential riot ring-leaders, and observing the psychological and ideological phenomena likely to activate an emotional response and knit such groups together.

The Direction Centrale des Renseignements Généraux consequently asked its territorial services to get interested in neighbourhoods subjected to socio-economic hardship: observations made in all the French départements by officers who had on-going contacts with numerous players in those neighbourhoods, eventually made it possible to draw up a summary, for each neighbourhood, of the vision each player; it was then up to the Direction Centrale to centralise all the data and establish a unified national vision of the situation. And so, in May 1991, some 800 poor and deprived neighbourhoods, that were locally perceived as being "difficult", were studied under different angles (urban planning, demographic and social aspects, behavioural changes, town policy, involvement of the voluntary sector, types of delinquency, existence or not of feelings of insecurity).

Feelings of insecurity and daily violence

The first point noted was the presence a feeling of insecurity in roughly half of the sites observed, while the actual crime figures were systematically lower than in the rest of the town: in other words, the existing malaise could not be placed in direct relationship with crime as it is understood by those services whose approach is essentially a judicial one; it should be underlined that such crime is essentially rational, individual, discrete and motivated by the search for profit (all characteristics that are the opposite of urban violence).

However, the insecurity was not, for all that, a figment of the imagination: listening carefully to the inhabitants and the persons working or carrying out their mission in these neighbourhoods (social workers, youth workers, policemen, teachers, postmen, firemen, doctors, chemists, retailers) it was possible highlight the central role played by a "small core group" of unemployed young people, who had already been identified during the first riots and who were continually and noisily occupying the public arena, with provocative, even intimidating attitudes, without however necessarily constituting an organised "gang". The description of their behaviour made it possible to draw up a list of a certain number of identifiable actions, all coming under the general heading of "urban violence" whenever they were done as a group, openly and with a will to provoke.

Some of these actions could not come under the heading of crime (impoliteness, rudeness), or did not give rise to official complaints (for reasons of fear or out of discouragement), or, if a complaint was lodged, were generally followed by no action by the authorities. They had a disproportionate impact on the neighbourhood, amplified by the visibility of their traces (broken windows, burned cars, etc.) and above all by the arrogance of their authors. Their forms were not many: noisy and obvious occupation of the public space; violent games, group petty crime; challenges to the inhabitants and local institutions. Moreover, they could remain exceptional in a neighbourhood and only involve half a dozen perpetrators, or on the contrary become repetitive and with an increasingly wider constituency of up to thirty or fifty persons.

Indicators of potential collective incitement

What also came out of the monographs was that these various incidents were not always present everywhere, that certain forms were far less common than others and that they never appeared in isolation. Thus the notion of escalation gradually came to the fore, as if the public arena was initially occupied naively and that gradually, in the face of the attitudes of withdrawal or the reproaches of the victims, the perpetrators felt increasingly the right impose their presence, to encroach first on communal territory and then on that of others, before entering fully into crime and declaring a kind of war on various institutions. Thus the notion of a scale of urban violence arose one might say spontaneously, more empirically than rationally, out of a mass of observations reported from the field.

At the lowest end of the scale were to be found the most frequent actions, those which did not have an anti-institutional character and which were aimed at individuals. Further up the scale were all the anti-institutional behaviours, less common but more significant in terms of challenges addressed to the authorities or to public order, where degrees 4, 5 and 6 represented a serious stage, signifying the capacity to mobilise the young people occupying the public space of a neighbourhood and their deliberate intention to entertain a logic of war, of "defending their territory".

One single criterion, the open and provocative challenge to order and/or institutions, ensures the unity of the scale, behaviours being graded both by the importance of the challenge issued and according to the potential for collective rebellion they imply: acts that are very serious with regard to morality and criminal law may find themselves at level 1, because their victims are individuals and that as such they therefore do not necessarily foreshadow riot phenomena, whereas stone-throwing at patrol vehicles, indicative of the development of a territorial micro-culture having the germs for potential rebellion, is at level 4, even when there have been no casualties. Riot forecasting is the interpretation key here.

Risk zone mapping

An initial status report involving this scale was carried out in June 1991. The objective was to help organise the dispatching of mobile intervention police forces. Since then, such status reports have been done on an annual basis, neighbourhoods being graded on the scale based on the incidents that have taken place over the previous 12 months (incidents reported by the territorial police and recorded in a national data base). This periodic assessment makes it possible to follow the geographical and qualitative evolution of urban violence over the years.

Certain neighbourhoods, identified because of their social difficulties in 1991 but at the time described as not presenting characteristics of insecurity, have since then seen urban violence appear in its initial forms and gradually move up various degrees, in accordance with the succession order established by the scale, such "longitudinal" observation confirming the relevance of the notion of escalation that had come out of a "transversal" observation. Other neighbourhoods, that were explosive in 1991, have since calmed down, though they have sometimes become the headquarters of illegal "business", involving the youngest members and giving rise to purely individual violence, related to "trade" disputes. Thus one may observe certain neighbourhoods rise regularly over several years, then cease to make themselves noticed. Others may stay calm for years; still others have been through successive phases of serious troubles and durable periods of quiet.

In seven years, the scale has not needed to be increased by new degrees, as might have been the case if the riots had taken on more serious forms. And the existing degrees have made it possible to include some new modus operandi: for example, the show and use of pit-bull dogs and the use of firearms may, according to the quality of the victim, find themselves on grades 1, 3 or 6 of the scale.

Confirmation of the hypothesis on the occasion of new riots

During these seven years, no grade 7 or 8 riot has happened in areas that had not previously been identified by local observers for their more modest earlier records. A study undertaken in 1996 of 361 sensitive neighbourhoods which at the time appeared to be devoid of any form of urban violence on a day-to-day basis, showed that none of them had experienced a grade 7 or 8 incident during the previous four years. On the contrary, a certain number of neighbourhoods marked by daily violence had been the scene of this type of incident.

In addition, following certain tragedies affecting young people from neighbourhoods experiencing little or no daily violence, we have seen emotional reactions with an intensity less than grade 7 or 8: without presenting any difference in nature with riots as to their motives and objectives, they have differed in degree, taking on the form of one or more of the incidents graded 1 to 6 on the scale.

Consequently, a typology of sudden "reactional high fever" events was eventually identified, based both on the scale and on quantitative aspects (involving the number of authors and the duration of the crisis), and distinguishing the micro-riot (type 1 to 6 on the violence scale), which is the reaction of a small bunch of five to six individuals and only lasts a few moments, from the mini-riot (type 7) which involves 20 to 30 young people for an hour or two, and finally the fully fledged riot (type 8), which can last for several nights and involve from 50 to 200 young people, with confrontations with the police forces and urban guerrilla tactics. Resorting to a micro- or mini-riot rather than a full riot, following a tragedy, is at least partially related to the degree of daily violence as it appears in the annual status reports.

It is therefore possible to anticipate, in the short term, the nervousness of the peer group occupying public space, and the forms, the duration and the intensity of its possible violence, when affected by an event touching one of its members. One may also forecast the absence of reaction, by analysing the profile of the victim of the tragedy and the habits of the peer group, or by watching to see if the ring-leaders are currently present or absent from the neighbourhood.

From a forecasting point of view, it is however also necessary to take into account several other factors that go beyond the limits of the neighbourhood. In particular, seasonal patterns have been noted: comprehensive statistics of incidents of urban violence, inclusive of all forms and degrees, prove the existence of fairly regular fluctuations (significant low period in mid-summer, secondary low in the heart of winter, peaks in autumn and springtime) which have no easy explanation (chronobiological rythms? passing demobilisation in summer because of vacation periods? social and industrial relations difficulties associated with the return to work after the summer recess?) but which undoubtedly influence the reaction capacities. In addition, the passing interest shown by the media for "inner city" phenomena each time induces mimetic effects likely to favour bad-tempered reactions. Finally, the increased capacity of the authorities for anticipating and controlling crises plays a role in the appearance, the escalation or the snuffing out of a riot, as has been shown by the significant drop in the number of grade 8 incidents, especially in those areas already affected by urban violence and which have adapted to the phenomena.

The use of the scale has also made it possible to better perceive the mechanisms of daily violence and the nature of the motives for violence. At the same time as micro-riots or an absence of reaction following tragic incidents were being observed in quiet neighbourhoods, it was also noted conversely that very strong emotional reactions could sometimes arise even in the absence of any dramatic event.

The fact is that daily urban violence is accompanied by the development of a neighbourhood micro-culture whereby the "small hard core" becomes increasingly arrogant and touchy, protesting more and more often against "injustice", perceiving more and more the institutions and the rest of society as hostile, and therefore justifying crime and the development of an illegal underground economy. In the course of recent months we have thus seen a multiplication of large-scale reactions, on a truly urban guerrilla basis, against police action against the underground economy of drugs and concealment of stolen goods. These violent actions, perfectly organised (cutting power lines, lookouts using mobile phones, occupation of roofs by young men armed with previously stored manhole covers), were quite obviously pursuing a single objective: the protection of an illegal "business" territory. In other terms, if a neighbourhood devoid of daily violence needs some fatal tragedy in order to become the hot-spot of a micro- or mini-riot, a neighbourhood which is locked into grade 5 or 6 will rise to grade 8 if a real tragedy occurs and will multiply micro-riots for all the day-to-day frustrations and for a whole multitude of pretexts that do not stand up to analysis, engendered by a counter-culture with anarchistic connotations that multiplies the opportunities for friction between youth and institutions and justifies the violence by presenting it as the legitimate response to "institutional violence".

The grading of neighbourhoods on a scale of urban violence therefore provides a key that makes it possible to establish a hierarchy of triggering incidents and highlights the high degree of subjectivity behind the notion of "injustice" as it is perceived, or rather felt, by th youth of sensitive neighbourhoods.

Degree Observations

1
Gang violence, devoid of anti-institutional connotations (vandalism, raids on shops, car rodeos and setting fire to stolen vehicles, petty gang delinquency, brawls, settling of scores).

2
Collective provocation against security staff, verbal and manual abuse directed against adults, stealthy vandalism against public property.

3
Physical aggressions off institutional representatives (firemen, soldiers, inspectors, security staff, teachers, social workers) other than the police.

4
Crowd gatherings when the police intervene, telephone threats to policemen, stoning of patrol vehicles, demonstrations in front of police stations, hunts for dealers.

5
Vengeful gatherings to block police interventions, invasion of police stations.

6
Physical aggression of policemen, open attacks against police stations, ambushes, "stock-car" hits against police vehicles.

7
Open and massive vandalism, (devastation of shop windows, cars, throwing of cocktail molotovs) over a generally brief period, and without confronting the police force, by groups of 15 to 30 youths.

8
Guerrilla, riots, massive vandalism followed by confrontation with the police, repeated 3 to 5 nights running, by groups of 50 to 200 youths.

Lucienne BUI TRONG

Commissaire Principal

(Chief Superintendent)

in charge of the « Cities and Suburbs » d ivision

Direction Centrale des Renseignements Généraux

Ministry of the Interior. Paris (France)

Degree	Observations
1	Gang violence, devoid of anti-institutional connotations (vandalism, raids on shops, car rodeos and setting fire to stolen vehicles, petty gang delinquency, brawls, settling of scores).
2	Collective provocation against security staff, verbal and manual abuse directed against adults, stealthy vandalism against public property.
3	Physical aggressions off institutional representatives (firemen, soldiers, inspectors, security staff, teachers, social workers) other than the police.
4	Crowd gatherings when the police intervene, telephone threats to policemen, stoning of patrol vehicles, demonstrations in front of police stations, hunts for dealers.
5	Vengeful gatherings to block police interventions, invasion of police stations.
6	Physical aggression of policemen, open attacks against police stations, ambushes, "stock-car" hits against police vehicles.
7	Open and massive vandalism, (devastation of shop windows, cars, throwing of cocktail molotovs) over a generally brief period, and without confronting the police force, by groups of 15 to 30 youths.
8	Guerrilla, riots, massive vandalism followed by confrontation with the police, repeated 3 to 5 nights running, by groups of 50 to 200 youths.