Shaping the subculture of human source intelligence within criminal units? Testing Intelligence Analysis Groups in the French Gendarmerie

ABSTRACT

In response to new threats, the French Gendarmerie created Intelligence Analysis Groups within criminal units in 2017. The aim of this article is to show how IAGs are shaping a subculture of criminal intelligence through the main dynamics structuring CHIS management. Following a literature review, the first part of this paper contextualises the promotion of human intelligence in criminal units and presents the mixed approach employed. The second part demonstrates how handlers’ practices are geared toward two processes – the exploratory gathering of information followed by cleansing of such information – and require high availability, acting via three skills (cognitive, memory and empathy). The third part presents how two dimensions underpinning the handlers’ commitment (a shared belief regarding secrecy as being useful and partial autonomy) are directed through use of the ‘gray zone’ between judicial and administrative actions in order to enable judicial action.

KEYWORDS:

• Subculture
• CHIS management
• police culture
• intelligence studies

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 This article is the subject of a confidentiality agreement between the author and the French National Gendarmerie. Potentially containing information which may be confidential, it has been reviewed by the National Gendarmerie. The information and extracts produced were provided by handling officers. We would like to thank the gendarmes who enabled the writing of this article.

2 Law of 9 March 2004 ‘on the adaptation of justice to criminal evolutions’. This law has instituted several changes in the fight against organized crime. Among these changes, it legalizes the practice of using police informers, who will be paid only in cash. It also requires investigators to report the identity of their informers to their superiors, who will be registered with the Central Office of Sources (see Lévy 2008 and below).

3 For example, gendarmes complete a 90-hour ‘contact’ module during their initial training, in order to learn to whom and how to introduce themselves among local people (to the mayor, deputy, craftsmen, citizens, etc.).

4 This is especially true given that on 23 July 2015 the Constitutional Council gave priority to the judicial authority over the administrative authority. In other words, if an administrative action brings an infringement to light, the administrative authority will be obliged to inform the judicial authority if an investigation is opened.

5 This first contact often will take place in an apparently innocuous situation, but is, in reality, calculated. For example, by shoving or poking the target, or by gently ‘bumping into’ a vehicle. The use of the term ‘tamponner’ by French handlers refers to this last example (referring to bumper cars in fairgrounds).