In less than a month, high school protests over a lack of resources in the Paris suburbs have escalated into a striking wave of police violence and mass arrests. Videos showing officers beating peaceful young people and firing in breach of regulations have sparked widespread public outrage and creative forms of student resistance. How did a student demonstration over school conditions transform into a major public order crisis? The violence is primarily the result of a political choice by the Ministry of the Interior – prioritising arrests over negotiation – enabled by expanded pre-emptive offences and a hostile image of youth.

A Wave of Repression

The high school protests that began in schools in the Paris suburbs in mid-September over a lack of resources (absent teachers who are not replaced, run-down facilities and so on) have given rise to a striking wave of violence and repression. According to the Ministry of Justice, the police took 7,950 people in custody (85% of them minors) between the start of the movement and 13 October, and the Ministry of the Interior reports some 900 police officers and gendarmes injured over the same period, although it has not disclosed the circumstances of these injuries and the figure has been disputed. No official body has counted injuries among the students. A few events have drawn public attention: a high school student lost his hand in Lens when he picked up a stun grenade; a 14-year-old student suffered a double fracture of the jaw in the Paris suburbs after an officer fired a grenade launcher at him at point-blank range; and a police officer was violently assaulted in the Territoire de Belfort. More broadly, videos have gone viral showing police officers beating young people sitting peacefully with their batons, hiding their identification numbers, firing in breach of regulations, and threatening protesters and bystanders filming them. Meanwhile, the Ministry of the Interior has tried to put forward a different narrative by circulating videos and explanations portraying officers as the victims of a surge of violence. Since early October, the placards at the protests of high school students, who have now been joined by university students, have been full of slogans denouncing, often with humour, the violence committed by the police. These slogans rely on wordplay that is difficult to translate: “la police nous prothèse” (a play on “la police nous protège”, “the police protect us”, which becomes “the police give us prostheses”), “des moyens pas des moignons” (“resources, not stumps”) and “too young to be listened to, but old enough to be tear-gassed”.

The Evolution of Protest Policing in France

A detour through the classic literature on the policing of protest movements is useful here. Scholars have drawn an ideal-typical distinction between escalated force, which relies on little negotiation, a hostile view of protesters as an irrational crowd and the use of force, and negotiated management, which rests on a less antagonistic view of protesters and prioritises the protection of the right to demonstrate and negotiation, making force a last resort (McPhail et al., “Policing protest in the United States: 1960–1995”, 1998). France long embodied the first model: a strong state seeking to win the battle of the streets. However, a different logic prevailed, particularly from the mid-1980s onwards,¹⁾ as a result of the professionalisation of public order policing, the spread of norms of keeping a distance from protesters, and the development of negotiation practices involving protesters and trade union stewards. Since the early 2010s, however, the increasing use of force in protest policing has reversed this trend towards pacification (Fillieule and Jobard, Politiques du désordre, 2020), through a series of political choices rather than any single explicit decision. It has taken place against the background of a resurgence of social movements and a renewal of their repertoires of action, with environmental and social mobilisations that are more heterogeneous and less vertically organised, as shown by the protests against the labour law (2016), the Yellow Vests movement (2018–2019), the environmental protests against “mega-basins” (Sainte-Soline, 2023) and the protests against the pension reform (2023).

To account for this new episode of repression, we can consider, following della Porta et al. (The Policing of Transnational Protest, 2006), that a style of protest policing can be understood at the intersection of several dimensions: the behaviour of protesters, the professional knowledge and norms of the police, and political directives.

How Students Organise

Let us begin with the behaviour of the mobilised high school students. They use the means available to them: blockading their schools. Their mobilisation follows no clear hierarchy, and their movement does not operate through demonstrations notified in advance to the authorities. Such modes of action make intelligence-gathering more complex, at a time when it is already complicated by the exchange of information on closed social networks. As in other recent mobilisations (such as the Yellow Vests), no representative organisation carries the demands, which creates a great deal of uncertainty for the authorities, starting with school heads (on the Ministry of Education side) and prefects (on the Ministry of the Interior side).

Reflexes of Urban Combat

This elusiveness leaves police professionals with far less reliable knowledge of the mobilisation. Although France has historically equipped itself with forces specialised in public order (the compagnies républicaines de sécurité, or CRS, and the mobile gendarmerie squadrons), it is proactive units, such as the anti-crime squads (brigades anti-criminalité, or BAC), which specialise in fighting urban crime and are known for their excessive use of rubber bullet launchers (LBD) during the Yellow Vests movement (Fillieule and Jobard, 2020), that the authorities are sending to clear the blockaded schools. More generally, police elites, socialised into dealing with urban violence since the 2000s, approach public order in terms of unpredictable urban violence.

The Political Choice

The political factor, however, was probably the most decisive, in particular the strategy that the Ministry of the Interior chose at the outset. Its instructions during this movement confirm and amplify the choices made since the 2010s. They prioritised arrests in the event of a blockade, and therefore without any violence having been committed (on charges such as obstructing the freedom to work or the duties of teachers (Article 431-1 of the Criminal Code), remaining in a school without authorisation (Articles 431-22 and 431-23 of the Criminal Code), obstructing traffic (Article L. 412-1 of the Highway Code) or, as discussed below, taking part in a group with a view to committing violence or damage (Article 222-14-2 of the Criminal Code); see Club des juristes, “Blocage d’un lycée : que dit la loi ?”, 14 October 2026), with the minister repeating on TF1’s evening news on 2 October that there was “no instruction to show restraint”. Between the start of the movement and 5 October, the Ministry of Justice recorded 5,060 people placed in custody.

Such a policing strategy may well clear the schools and deter the mobilised students, but it inevitably leads to clashes and confrontations with the wider public, which has one essential characteristic that must be recalled here: it is made up of minors. Although we cannot be certain, the government and the Minister of the Interior appear to have assumed that the movement was the work of a politicised minority that arrests would deter. This strategy is also part of a broader context marked by two dynamics. The first is the proliferation of legal tools allowing pre-emptive arrests before any offence has been committed. One example, used during this wave of protests, is Article 222-14-2 of the Criminal Code (introduced by the “anti-gang” law of 2 March 2010), which punishes “knowingly taking part in a group (…) with a view to preparing, as characterised by one or more material acts, intentional violence against persons or destruction or damage to property”. Such tools make possible what law professor Olivier Cahn calls the risk of “trawl-net custody” (la garde à vue au chalut), that is, mass police custody on vague grounds, which has a deterrent effect on the teenage population. He writes: “For example, an order issued by the Paris police prefect on 7 October banned, on 8 and 9 October and within 100 metres of high schools, ‘the wearing of protective equipment intended to defeat all or part of the means used by law enforcement officers to maintain public order within processions, marches and gatherings’. Individuals wearing a bicycle helmet or swimming goggles, which are sometimes used as protection against tear gas, can thus be arrested. Breaching the order proves the intention to take part in a violent group.” Such decisions undermine the right to demonstrate peacefully, which the Constitutional Council has recognised since a 1995 decision (no. 94-352 DC of 18 January 1995). The second dynamic concerns the representation of young people in the political world, which has traditionally oscillated between praise for the promise of youth (tolerant and innovative) and denunciation of a dangerous youth (violent and ignorant). For some years now, the second image has clearly prevailed, and politicians have increasingly resorted to negative and condescending formulas, as when a prime minister, Gabriel Attal, declared in his general policy statement in January 2024: “You break it, you fix it; you make a mess, you clean it up.” It is worth comparing this strategy with the one the government adopted two years earlier towards farmers, whose protests involved motorway blockades and damage to property. On 25 January 2024, Gérald Darmanin, then Minister of the Interior, declared on TF1: “You don’t respond to suffering by sending in the CRS [riot police].” At the time, the government tolerated the damage and the blockades and favoured negotiation.

Beyond the Blockades

The escalation of violence around France’s high school and student protests between mid-September and 16 October stemmed chiefly from a proactive policing strategy: clearing schools through mass arrests, with no instruction to show restraint. It has injured young people and officers alike and deepened antagonism between protesters and the police. Police violence has itself become one of the drivers of the mobilisation. This is overpolicing.

The phase that opened on Saturday 17 October, with the spectacular ransacking of public buildings (in Paris, but also in Lyon, Marseille and Limoges) and the looting of shops, raises different questions about public order policing: intelligence too weak to anticipate the violence, and deployments ill-suited to protecting property and preventing damage. This is underpolicing, and the reasons for this failure deserve scrutiny.

These events show how extremely difficult public order policing is in a polarised social and political world where social dialogue struggles to take hold, caught between the necessary protection of the right to collective expression and the protection of property and persons. Faced with violence, the government may be tempted to multiply bans (including curfews) and arrests in the name of preserving order. Unless it also opens dialogue and negotiation, such a strategy risks escalating tensions, deepening antagonism between the police and the population and exposing officers even further. This logic harms both citizens, who suffer brutal practices, and police officers, who are given ill-defined and risky missions.