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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Sprache: Englisch
Awareness of complexity in science and technology dates back to the 1970s. However, all social systems tend to develop structures that become more complex over time, be it within families, tribes, cities, states, or societal and economic organizations. Complexities 2 covers a broad array of fields, from justice and linguistics to education and organizational management. The aim of this book is to show, without aiming to provide a comprehensive overview, the diversity of approaches and behaviors towards the obstacle of complexity in understanding and achieving human actions. When we see complexity as the incompleteness of knowledge and the uncertainty of the future, we realize that simplifying is not an adequate approach to complexity, even in the humanities and social sciences. This book explores the relationship between order and disorder in this field of knowledge.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024
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Table of Contents
Cover
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Preface
1 Perspectives on the Complexity of Criminal Investigations
1.1. Introduction
1.2. Criminal investigation, a process for reducing uncertainty
1.3. The criminal investigation, a complex system
1.4. The criminal investigation in interaction with its environment
1.5. Conclusion
1.6. References
2 Complexity and Models in Social and Human Sciences
2.1. Impact of complexities
2.2. Short historical perspective of recent views on complexity
2.3. Paradigm shift in approaching complexity
2.4. System, function and structure in the world associated with sociology
2.5. Complexity, models and humanities and social sciences
2.6. Conclusion
Appendix: Confrontation of theory and reality in economics
2.7. References
3 Detangling the Linguistic Quagmire of Bad Information
3.1. Introduction
3.2. The semantic field of information
3.3. Philosophy of information: a hierarchy in the making
3.4. The grammar of the verb “inform”
3.5. On the other side of the mirror: reception and possession of information
3.6. Wrongly informing, being wrongly informed: toward a taxonomy of “wrong” information
3.7. An initial framework for perspectives
3.8. References
4 Complexity in the Social Sciences: Is it a Transforming Perspective?
4.1. Introduction
4.2. Outline of an approach to complexity theory
4.3. The interdisciplinary preference
4.4. Complexity and realism
4.5. The application of complexity theory
4.6. Conclusion
4.7. Acknowledgments
4.8. References
5 Complexity as Duality? A Connection in Question
5.1. Introduction: our research objectives
5.2. A renewed epistemological framework for understanding complexity as a duality
5.3. From systems to systemics
5.4. F. Varela’s contribution
5.5. Saussurian duality, text and metastability
5.6. To not conclude
5.7. References
6 Organization, Models and Representations: From Complexity to Power
6.1. Introduction: organization, models and representations
6.2. A systemic model of organization
6.3. Brief review of the notion of a “black box”
6.4. Governance at the basis of political models of organization
12
6.5. References
7 Epistemological Reflections on the Lifecycle of Crisis and Resilience in Organizations
7.1. Introduction
7.2. Organizations in perpetual change
7.3. The element of identity when facing multiple, accelerating shocks
7.4. Analysis of the crisis lifecycle and turning points
7.5. Hologrammatic principle of resilience, the dialogics of time model
7.6. Conclusion
7.7. References
8 The Complexity of the Educational Revolution: Framework and Case-Study
8.1. Introduction
8.2. University graduates
8.3. Early school leavers
8.4. Conclusion
8.5. References
Postface
List of Authors
Index
Other titles from ISTE in Systems and Industrial Engineering – Robotics
End User License Agreement
List of Tables
Chapter 3
Table 3.1. The polysemous verb “get informed”, its aspects and its processes...
Table 3.2. The polysemous verbal group “be informed”, its aspects and its proc...
Table 3.3. Families of “information” types according to the refined tree diagr...
Chapter 4
Table 4.1. An adaption of Cilliers’ seminal definition of complex systems...
Chapter 6
Table 6.1. The two registers of analytic and systemic modeling
Table 6.2. Mechanisms of governance
Chapter 8
Table 8.1. Segregation by educational credentials: DU-values (and IU-values be...
Table 8.2. Clustering of educational credentials: DL-values (and IL-values bet...
List of Illustrations
Chapter 1
Figure 1.1. Actor strategies in an investigation.
Figure 1.2A. Criminal investigation system model.
Figure 1.2B. Criminal investigation system model.
Figure 1.2C. Criminal investigation system model.
Figure 1.3. Factors influencing the resolution of investigations.
Chapter 2
Figure 2.1. Representation of the multiverse in which we are embedded accordin...
Figure 2.2. Schematic representation of the architecture of a BDI agent. Input...
Chapter 3
Figure 3.1. Information and related terms
9
.
Figure 3.2. Information tree according to Floridi (2010)
Figure 3.3. Types of process according to the aspects of the verb. Aspects and...
Figure 3.4. Potential processes for the verb “inform”.
Figure 3.5. The intelligence cycle (Official Documents of French Military Doct...
Figure 3.6. “Getting informed” as expressing a need: from the question to the ...
Figure 3.7. Tree diagram for factual information, with a symmetrical account o...
Figure 3.8. Expanded tree diagram of information with recipient and grammatica...
Figure 3.9. Hypothesis of the objective point of view in the previous tree dia...
Chapter 5
Figure 5.1. The passage from the classic representation to a chronological, di...
Figure 5.2. Excerpt from a Court of Appeals decision presented in the order of...
Figure 5.3. Dualism according to Varela
Figure 5.4. Duality according to Varela
Figure 5.5. According to Varela, representations of interactions in a graph sy...
Chapter 6
Figure 6.1. Control and regulation of a partially determined system
Chapter 7
Figure 7.1. Lifecycle of a crisis
Figure 7.2. The parts of the crisis lifecycle: before, during and after.
Figure 7.3. The characteristics of the dialogics of time.
Chapter 8
Figure 8.1. The spatial distribution of adults with a university degree in Bel...
Figure 8.2. The spatial distribution of adults with a university degree in Bel...
Figure 8.3. The spatial distribution of 25- to 34-year olds with a university ...
Figure 8.4. Average income in 1963 (in euros) and percentage of university gra...
Figure 8.5. Average income and percentage of university graduates in 2011
Figure 8.6. Relative evolution of average income and share of university gradu...
Figure 8.7. The spatial distribution of adults with only primary schooling in ...
Figure 8.8. The spatial distribution of adults with only primary or lower seco...
Figure 8.9. The spatial distribution of 25- to 34-year olds with only primary ...
Figure 8.10. Unemployment rate and percentage of early school leavers in 1961
Figure 8.11. Unemployment rate and percentage of early school leavers in 2011
Figure 8.12.Relative evolution of unemployment rate and number of early schoo...
Guide
Cover Page
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Preface
Begin Reading
Postface
List of Authors
Index
Other titles from ISTE in Systems and Industrial Engineering – Robotics
WILEY END USER LICENSE AGREEMENT
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Systems of Systems Complexity Set
coordinated byJean-Pierre Briffaut
Volume 6
Complexities 2
Various Approaches in the Field of Social and Human Sciences
Edited by
Jean-Pierre Briffaut
Postface by
Daniel Krob
First published 2024 in Great Britain and the United States by ISTE Ltd and John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms and licenses issued by the CLA. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside these terms should be sent to the publishers at the undermentioned address:
ISTE Ltd27-37 St George’s RoadLondon SW19 4EUUK
www.iste.co.uk
John Wiley & Sons, Inc.111 River StreetHoboken, NJ 07030USA
www.wiley.com
© ISTE Ltd 2024The rights of Jean-Pierre Briffaut to be identified as the author of this work have been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s), contributor(s) or editor(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of ISTE Group.
Library of Congress Control Number: 2023950384
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication DataA CIP record for this book is available from the British LibraryISBN 978-1-78630-876-4
Preface
Why use the plural “complexities” in the title of this book?
The word “complexity” is used in a wide variety of contexts to account for situations in very different realms of knowledge.
There are many ways to quantify our challenges:
design an object with many features;
perform a task;
understand the uses of a system with correlated functions;
understand the tree structure of a document search with hypertext links;
decipher a message;
become aware of an operational drift situation;
understand the motivations of the actors in a collaborative context;
react in a crisis situation;
counter the emergence of complexity, that is, facilitate the transition to simplification in the realm of thought and discourse.
In each case, approaches attempting to control the situation may involve very different methods and techniques.
It is the ambition of this book to try to show, without aiming at a complete panorama, these varieties of approaches and behaviors vis-à-vis the obstacles that constitute complexity in the understanding and realization of human courses of action. Sometimes, for the cultural sciences in particular, these obstacles can lead to wealth insofar as the analysis leads to cross-fertilization interactions between disciplines that do not usually collaborate.
In general, it is worth noting that the specialized literature shows a clear reciprocity between the concepts of “system” and “model”. It is through astronomy that the notion of system, first understood as a material organization in ancient Greece, has been used in the realm of knowledge. It is the Galilean revolution that brought this term into the semantic field of abstract theories (The Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems by Galileo (1632)).
As for the word “model”, it comes from the Latin modulus, diminutive of modus, “measure”. It was initially a term of architecture used to establish the relationships of proportion between the parts of an architectural work. The word “modulus” led in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance first to the word “mould”, then in the 16th century to the word “model” through the intermediary of the Italian “modello”.
The word “model” presents a congenital ambiguity, sometimes meaning the original, the ideal to achieve, and sometimes the copy, the simple realization or interpretation of an existing entity. Widely used in experimental sciences from the 19th century onward, it appears as an instrument of intelligibility “the function of which is a function of delegation. The model is an intermediary to which we delegate the knowledge function, more precisely the still-puzzling enigma, in the presence of a field of study the access of which, for various reason is difficult for us”.1
The themes covered in the different chapters make this clear explicitly or implicitly; the concepts of “system” and “model” have a heuristic function in approaching complexity in many fields of knowledge.
The contributions are divided into two parts. The first includes contributions with technical and scientific orientations. The second deals with subject matters that are more related to the human and social sciences.
I would like to thank all those who contributed to this two-volume work, the objective of which is to show that the complexity – or complexities – which we feel in an increasingly significant way in our daily lives is present, in one form or another, in all fields of knowledge over which humans exert cognitive activities. I would like to particularly thank Daniel Krob, founder and director of the industrial chair at the École polytechnique for more than 15 years, for his contribution in the form of a postface. Daniel is currently President of CESAMES (Centre d’excellence pour l’architecture, le management, l’économie et la stratégie des systèmes). He is the author of Model-based Systems Architecting from the same set of books as the current work.
Jean-Pierre BRIFFAUTDecember 2023
Note
1
Bachelard, S. (1979). Some historical aspects of the notions of model and the justification of models
.
In
Proceedings of the Colloquium Elaborating and Justifying Models.
Maloine-Doin, Paris.
1Perspectives on the Complexity of Criminal Investigations
1.1. Introduction
We all think we understand criminal investigations and often believe ourselves well placed to offer an opinion about them. In our pleasure-seeking society, they are an object of fiction that plays on the imagination. They satisfy our desire for sensations. They reveal the disturbing behavior of human nature and respond to our urge for justice.
A criminal investigation is not, however, made up of the well-worn intellectual and technical apparatus imagined by certain television series or crime novels. Nor is it any more a world of conspiracy or the grim background of detective stories. As its etymology suggests, the media does not insert itself between the spectator and reality, opening up the playing field to a rich and fictitious world. Unencumbered by its modes of representation, of this CSI effect that acts like a fun-house mirror (Borisova et al. 2016), an investigation must be seen as a simultaneously more ordinary and more complex reality. It calls much more for something concrete rather than imaginative thinking.
Even stripped of its fictions, however, our understanding of an investigation remains veiled by several biases. Professionals are not always the best judges of this procedure for seeking truth put into their hands. An investigation is not an intangible and intemporal object whose endpoint is certain and clearly defined. An investigation is much more than that. It can be considered a system that requires numerous disciplines to understand it. Each specialist seems to approach it through the prism of their sole specialty, revealing, one after another, a juridical, forensic, practical, psychological, historical or sociological perception of investigations. Pointing out this compartmentalization, Cusson compares the investigation to a Hydra with three heads: juridical, scientific and strategic (2018). The Canadian criminologist thus underscores a certain measure of reductionism. Based on the propositions of theories of complexity, a holistic, interdisciplinary and complete approach could enrich our understanding of investigative work.
Recent research (Barlatier 2017) has shown that studies on investigations are relatively consistent in terms of the parameters studied and the explanations provided. Observations, at times iconoclastic, formulated 50 years ago by foreign researchers, are finding echoes in France. Investigations thus appear to be dictated by the relatively stable and independent forces of national juridical structures, making it possible to analyze the entire process.
An investigation is a form of information management, not far from the practices of companies. It depends however on unique procedures given the particularities of its object. As a process of reducing uncertainty, an investigation is a complex system whose utility and modus operandi can only be correctly appreciated from without its environment.
1.2. Criminal investigation, a process for reducing uncertainty
An investigation is an information process adapted to the requirements of its time and asserting the manifestation of truth.
1.2.1. A process of information analysis
Seen from its principal objective, an investigation is a process designed to gather useful information. Returning to this essential characteristic, it seems relevant to us to look toward the American brand of pragmatic philosophy. One of its principal thinkers, the American philosopher John Dewey, thinks that we find cognitive experiences, reflective and intentional, beyond organic experiences and reflexes. He uses “investigation” to designate the structured means of knowing applicable to all areas of human action and wherever reason is applied.
Dewey considers an investigation to be a “cognitive matrix” whose purpose is to resolve problems. It constitutes the transition from an uncertain, clouded or chaotic situation, on one end, to a coherent and unified situation, on the other. This transformation operation relies on an initial diagnostic, as well as on the validation of causes for the given consequences (testability). Philosophy insists on the fact that this process is not part of a theoretical model. Its validity comes from facing the unexpected and the accidents of reality (Dewey 1938).
This vision portrays an investigation as a heuristic where we have, successively, the diagnosis of the problem, the collection of useful information, reasoning and the elaboration of solutions that are compared with the reality of facts. It is therefore an attempt to elucidate an enigmatic situation using the tools provided by reason.
The philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce, Dewey’s colleague, thinks that an investigation does not necessarily seek truth but consists primarily of overcoming doubt in order to move into action. To this effect, referring to Aristotle, Peirce tests the elementary inferences of logic (induction, deduction and especially abduction) and their combinations in the context of a hypothetical-deductive strategy (Peirce 1903).
The postulates of pragmatic philosophy in America can be expressed using the concrete aspects of theories on decision-making, and notably those on the limits of rationality developed by the Nobel laureate in economy, Herbert Simon. In the context of complex decisions, such as the ones required by an investigation, our choices are not guided by absolute and optimal rationality.
Being as close as possible to the reality of the choices that agents face requires us to consider our decisions as programmed, habitual and repetitive. When we are invited to do something new, there is a limitation of choosing the solutions that offer a minimal satisfaction (Simon 1983).
In this imperfect context, agents rely on simple and efficient heuristics to manage information and find solutions. Such is the case of the “information cycle” that situates the acquisition of knowledge in a retroactive loop where the identification of the problem is followed by the collection of data, the organization of information and the analysis and implementation of results. Known by all specialists of information science, this simple process allows for a simultaneously supple and structured approach for analyzing information, oriented toward a production of knowledge that can lead to action. Such is the mission of the investigator.
Philosophers and economists thus help us grasp the fundamentals of the work of an investigator in a concrete way and with a new perspective. They prompt us to see it as a part of information sciences, a shift that moves us from the realm of the uncertain to that of the explainable. An investigation consists of mitigating the loss and distortion of data through an apparatus of optimal collection.
Addressing this issue implies turning toward theories of information. Wilmer (1970) thus considers that within the context of an investigation, a police officer and a criminal work against each other in a “battle of information” where the hope of the former to optimize available information is opposed to the intention of the latter to reduce his area of exposure.
As the fruit of antagonistic forces, each investigation is thus characterized by a unique information profile (Stelfox 2009). The investigator’s art is therefore to optimize and reconstruct the past through the collection of information, at times obvious, often sibylline. It is a kind of struggle against the progressive erosion of information caused by circumstances, time or the countermeasures of the offender. The investigator is thus an information manager, a “welder of knowledge”. He does a job that is relatively ordinary, compared to many other professions. Particularly emblematic, however, his mission includes unique characteristics that cannot be ignored. Police officers are often described by sociologists as bureaucratic soldiers whose work is organized in a military fashion, hierarchical and bureaucratic (Bittner 1970). Among them, the specificity of the investigator is sometimes underscored. He is a kind of romantic bureaucrat aspiring toward independence (Sanders 1977).
In a general sense, criminology and particularly the sociology of penal institutions contribute to the demystification of the realities of investigative work – reactive, formal, habitual and underperforming (Greenwood et al. 1977). The investigator is seen as an agent with a large amount of discretionary power who aspires to professional independence with respect to his bosses (Skolnick 1966). An “inverted hierarchy” seems to hide the reality of the power that field agents have (Muchielli 2004). Investigative work thus appears to be done by the lower level agents, with little transparency, using judgments based on the social constructs that come from policing culture and crippled with biases as their starting point (Mc Conville et al. 1991). Investigations apparently also contribute to our understanding of what a crime is, as a social construct (Ericson 1981). They are therefore compelled to evolve with society.
1.2.2. A process adapted to the needs of its time
Regarding the investigations by Oedipus into the evils experienced by the inhabitants of Thebes at the hands of Damien, Foucault helps us reflect on the meaning of the penal process and the discursive strategies associated with it (Foucault 1975, 1994, 2012).
An investigation blends in with its time. It responds to the social, technological and institutional structures of the moment. It adapts to the procedures for establishing truth in relation to ideas and beliefs. In the Middle Ages, the justice system thus validated certain forms of supernatural proof that were an expression of divine will. It also validated forms of social proof based on the approval of pairs or the regulation of conflict by collectivities (e.g. the vendetta and compensations). The enlightenment contributed to the establishment of rational proof, and positivism foreshadowed scientific proof. Capitalism then developed a contractual vision of negotiated proof.
Thus, more than responding to an absolute need for truth, the investigation adapts above all to the context, with the goal of producing a relative truth accepted in a specific time and place. This search for social acceptance implies the adaptation of the processes and techniques for producing knowledge. Therefore, the investigation, like other social phenomena, has a homeostatic dimension.
A judicial investigation is a social construct that, according to Foucault, is part of discursive procedures and strategies for knowing. Foucauldian thought affirms that the investigation and justice are techniques that make it possible to regulate conflicts through a widespread and constant action of correction and homogenization of behaviors and individuals. It is much more efficient and much less costly than private wars with local lords or the armed repression of popular revolts (Foucault 1972).
In a system where the regulation of conflicts was enforced locally, often in a one-to-one relationship, seigniorial and royal judicial authority only intervened in a subsidiary manner. The establishment of royal bans and the guarantee they would be respected by means of a prosecutor created an intercession where the State interfered in the relationship between individuals. In this context, the act of defying a ban is a direct offense against those in power. For this reason, it must be suppressed. Compensation to the victim thus becomes a secondary concern (ibid.).
If its evolution can be seen as part of a continuity, the investigation has therefore not always existed in its current form. Recourse to third party agents to remedy a crime one has fallen victim to appeared embryonically in the 18th century. These first manifestations were not only those of a public police force. Investigations also frequently found their roots in the private sector, for example, the activities of the thief takers in London or the Pinkertons in the United States. In France, the Criminal Investigation Code of 1808 delegated this to the judiciary. Magistrates remained its principal actors until the industrial revolution and the explosion of attacks on private property forced it to delegate to police forces through prosecutors, who would later be officialized in the Penal Procedure Code of 1958.
Throughout the second half of the 20th century, criminality again underwent rapid growth, accentuated by the proliferation of penal bans and, notably, the evolution of drug traffic. This period generated a contentious administrative force that explains the autonomous investigative capacities in specialized subjects. With the development of the Internet and cybercriminality, the thresholds for delinquency gained an extra level. This renews the question of how investigative techniques must adapt to the stakes of the moment.
From this Foucauldian perspective of an archeology of knowledge, social functions are not born and do not evolve according to the modes of representation that are generally recognized but come from discursive strategies and power struggles. From this perspective, an investigation is not born of the will of the Sate to give itself the power to determine what is just and unjust and to say what is true and false.
1.2.3. A process aiming to manifest the truth
For legal experts, a criminal investigation contributes to the manifestation of a truth that, in fine, is supremely determined by the judicial authority. At the end of this process, the elements gathered are consolidated by the authority on the thing being judged, which will be difficult to call into question.
Philosophers observe this same object from a different point of view. Foucault (1994) goes back to the myth of Oedipus to establish the genealogy of a halfreconstituted truth. L’Heuillet (2001) refers us to the representation of the sumbolon, the terracotta disc that the Greeks would break in two and distribute to pairs in order to let them confirm their respective identities.
The historians Carlo Ginzburg and Dominique Kalifa believe this truth comes from an “indexing paradigm”, a process of reconstruction, a will to index and decipher what is real (Ginzburg 1979; Kalifa 2010). Criminologists reinforce this fragmentary approach of reconstructing the past to arrive at a truth (Kind 1994; Osterburg 2007).
In any case, these different approaches are often complementary. They reveal the double existence of, on the one hand, a “procedural truth” acquired through the application of a judicial rite for administering proof and, on the other hand, a “substantial truth” animated by the conviction that it is possible to reach an intrinsic knowledge of what is real. The question of truth thus opposes the obligation of means and the obligation of results, with the hope that the latter will be born of the former.
A third form can be distinguished as “conventional truth”, that is to say, a negotiated truth between parties that satisfies each side. This latter manifestation reminds us that the goal of the investigation is not necessarily the quest for truth per se but above all the search for a return to order in the context of a social perturbance caused by a crime. By accepting the diversity of sources of truth, it is logical to wonder if a plurality of truths does not exist that is simultaneously social, religious, economic, psychological or legal. Truth then becomes the particular meaning from the point of view from which we observe a thing. Similarly, an investigation can be seen as the expression of a particular truth, expressing the incriminating and exonerating elements in the relationship between the crime, the author and the victim.
This perspective introduces relativism into a notion that has traditionally been described as absolute. Far from being unique, it refers to the acceptance of plurality. For certain legal philosophers (Volk 2000), truth is a transfer concept between the reality of facts and a just judgment of this situation. To be sure, if accuracy is not incompatible with justice, the truth is but one of the constitutive elements.
Some therefore claim that an investigation is above all a process of “constituting meaning” (Innes 2003), the creation of a convincing and believable story (Cicourel 1968). It would thus be based on a narrative that consists of communicating complex information in a structured and intelligible form with the purpose of winning the conviction of the judge and convincing the judge. This approach introduces a performative perspective into the objective of an investigation. The efficiency of the investigative process thus replaces the search for truth.
Elucidation becomes an essential factor that makes it possible to measure the success or failure of an investigation. Out of all the conflicts, how many situations have been able to come to a resolution? How many criminals have been identified? How many were the object of pursuits by the judicial authority? We can also ask whether the rate of resolution is the best factor for illustrating the performance of an investigation. A deeper analysis indeed allows us to bestow it with several other uses.
Investigations can thus have the effect of preventing, dissuading or neutralizing delinquent phenomena or criminal groups by modifying the contextual or circumstantial parameters of the crime. The psychological effect can also be appreciated through the satisfaction it brings to some of its actors. With respect to the victim, this is as much an objective satisfaction (that is to say, making compensation possible) as it is subjective (i.e. reassure and provide moral satisfaction). With respect to the magistrate, we mean the perception of the quality of services provided, the creation of a trusting relationship with investigators and the forces of law and order, which can then be capitalized upon in future investigations. With respect to the general population, finally, the effects of an investigation make it possible to fight against the feeling of insecurity, recall the power of the ban, protect against injustice and ensure that public power implements the necessary means for a crime to not remain unpunished. Finally, if an investigation is a process marked by the opening and the closing of a dossier, it can also be considered for the knowledge it produces about delinquent phenomena and spaces.
This knowledge must not be lost and must be optimized within a logic of criminal information. The debriefing of investigations and the expiration of information become a worry for police forces.
This brief presentation of the stakes of an investigation shows that a multidisciplinary approach allows us to appreciate this concept in all its richness. A detailed examination of criminal investigative processes lets us go further in our analysis and consider investigations as complex systems.
1.3. The criminal investigation, a complex system
A criminal investigation presents an official face, masking aspects that are less accessible to the public. Just like a play at the theater, it is better to be aware of the forestage as well as the backstage area to pay attention to the acts as well as the actors. This double gaze lets us imagine a model of the investigation process that takes the diversity of forces animating it into account.
1.3.1. The stage and the acts
An investigation is as much a procedure and a process as it is a practice.
Since a criminal procedure is intrusive and coercive, it threatens fundamental liberties: the right to come and go, the right to private life, freedom of thought and expression and so on. The law and penal procedures thus play the role of a safeguard and constitute, in each State, a barometer of individual liberties. Analysis in comparative law demonstrates that a proportional relationship is established between, on the one hand, the powers that investigators and magistrates have, and, on the other hand, the urgency of situations and the seriousness of crimes.
Moreover, at each level of presumption, whether one is a witness, suspect, someone questioned or convicted, these are the elements orienting the investigation, the clues or the proof weighing on the individual that make it possible to measure the increase in coercion that can be used against him.
Beyond this economy of constraints, the law and penal procedure create another essential balance between secrecy and transparency. The secret is an essential factor for the efficiency of an investigator. It allows him to keep the initiative in the summary of information and collect elements while preserving their spontaneity. The secret is often preferred by investigative legal proceedings. Transparency, meanwhile, establishes confidence in the legal system. It guarantees trustworthiness and loyalty in the collection of proof. It authorizes the confrontation of arguments in a contradictory framework and allows the person being questioned to deploy a defense. Transparency is generally tied to accusatory legal proceedings.
Legal systems thus tend to present two philosophical perspectives on the manifestation of truth: inquisitorial procedure relies on the belief in a substantial truth, and accusatory procedure is oriented more toward the principle of a procedural or negotiated truth. There is no judicial system that is totally polarized, however. The majority position the cursor between these two extremes according to their history and legal culture.
Moreover, the law is not always oriented toward the search for the truth. It also reflects a managerial vision of the legal system. It creates a balance of power between the actors (i.e. investigators, prosecutors, judges, victim, suspects and their lawyers, experts and various service providers). It seeks to improve the management of judiciary influx, namely, through the creation of procedural courts meant to prevent the penal system from getting saturated.
The French legal system is oriented toward having magistrates and police forces learn and master the law. The law normalizes action by defining what is allowed and forbidden.
It appears, however, to be a necessary condition, although not sufficient, of the investigation. By training litigants, we do not automatically train investigators. Investigations do not come down to mere procedure. An investigation is also a process.
This process establishes a sort of cinematography. It configures the information that is collected, and how it is processed, analyzed and used, with the aim of characterizing crimes and objectively tying them to the victim, the facts and the author.
To this end, a combination of investigative acts in the context of a planned strategy or a reaction to the events is necessary. Based on the requirements of legality, loyalty and the protection of fundamental rights, investigative acts produce raw data, information, traces, clues and even proof.
Whether they are traditional (hearings, searches and tailing) or come from the most recent technologies (interception of communications, sound recordings and image capture), whether they are simple or whether they require expertise to be used, their combination is meant to optimize the information profile produced by the crime and which the investigator inherits.
Finally, beyond the collective dimension that underlies the process, an investigation is also a practice that calls for knowledge, know-how and the ability on the part of the investigator, i.e., on his training, mastery and availability.
Sir Conan Doyle has his consulting detective, Sherlock Holmes, say that any good investigator must have three qualities: that of knowledge, observation and reasoning (Conan Doyle 1890). Because of his personal experience as a doctor, the author had understood the utility of tying semiotics with a strong ability to understand and interpret.
These individual abilities are not only the fruit of learning on the job and a discretionary choice, perhaps even arbitrary, by the investigator. They are a complex combination of individual decisions (founded on instinct, creativity or experience), practices that have become standardized through professionalism (from training and the culture of the profession) and standardized processes (for acts that must be able to be reproduced in an identical manner without a margin of appreciation for the agent).
In order to process information, an investigation thus combines heuristics, structured reasoning and systematic methodologies (Ribaux 2014). From this concrete and practical perspective, an investigation must be the object of a praxeological approach whose purpose is to improve the definitions of the cognitive profile of investigators and examine the economy of decision-making in matters of criminal investigations. Beyond these backdrops, an investigation is animated by less visible dynamics. It is also important to understand these movements happening backstage.
1.3.2. Backstage and actor strategies
The investigative system is also a field of informal relationships where the actors evolve in accordance with the objectives, which are not limited to the elucidation of crimes.
The sociologists Michel Crozier and Erhard Friedberg taught us that organizations are spaces where a structured game takes place in which the actors deploy strategies in order to influence the system according to their own interests (Crozier and Friedberg 1977). The actors are thus inscribed in indeterminate zones of the system and take advantage of this incertitude to increase their power and room for maneuver while reducing that of their competitors.
Each actor thus takes advantage of the resources at hand within the system to increase his power. These can be formal resources constituted by the functions and prerogatives that are ascribed to them. It can also be theoretical and practical knowledge inherent to their activity.
But these resources go well beyond the elements found on the stage, front-and-center, that were already mentioned. Since an investigation is an information system, mastery of this strategic resource acquires an essential importance. The latter underpins three other resources: the ones consisting of occupying a strategic location in the system’s operations, that of authorizing the allocation of time to it, as well as the necessary resources, and that of avoiding being easily replaced in the job (ibid.).
In light of this criteria, despite an occasionally important role, certain “erratic” actors are automatically disqualified.
First, private entities have a limited role that prevents them from having any real influence on the system. The victim has become, over the course of history, a secondary actor for the proceedings; suspected of having vengeful feelings, he is given limited powers and the simple right to compensation. The suspect has more important guarantees for his defense. But as an involuntary actor, he suffers the penal process more than he controls it.
Second, the lawyers of the victim or the suspect are permanent and professionalized participants in the legal system. Their categorical interests go beyond the individual interest of their clients. The collective capacity to structure their profession and rise as an influential group allows them to play a role in the legal process and its evolutions. The recent reforms of French law give defense lawyers a more active role at the start of the legal process, as early as the police questioning phase. Nevertheless, these powers remain reactive and restricted throughout the investigative phase of the proceedings. They allow them to take more initiative during the accusatory phase.
Third, although essential to the proper functioning of justice, experts and service providers also maintain an erratic role within the legal system. Though the influence of the expert grows in the handling of a litigation that becomes increasingly technical, his interventions remain punctual and irregular. Weakly structured, put in competition with each other in a system of economic and symbolic gratification with respect to legal bureaucracy, these contributors to justice cannot claim to play a central role within the legal process.
Finally, the media and the public weigh in on the unfolding of such affairs. This influence will probably grow with the development of social networks and the relative marginalization of traditional media. Nevertheless, this influence remains punctual and does not stretch out beyond the affairs it takes interest in.
Only three actors are thus in competition to play a significant role within the investigative process: the legal authority, the police hierarchy and the investigator himself.
The legal authority is alternately incarnated by the State prosecutor, the committing magistrate, the district court judge, the sitting judge or the sentencing judge. It is legally assigned the management of the penal process, and notably that of investigations. Performed directly by the magistrate at the start of the 19th century, the investigative role was nonetheless progressively abandoned with the rise in litigations over the attempts on private property that were concomitant with the rise of capitalism. The magistrate thus became an organizer more than an executor. Following a logic of self-distancing from litigation, he then became a regulator of orders. Without the means, the competency, the time and even the desire to perform investigations, magistrates entered a Hegelian dialectic of dependency on the police force. “The judge without a police officer is nothing; a police officer without a judge is everything” (Lemonde 1975, p. 23).
In France, at the end of the 1990s, the Ministry of Justice tried to restore the role of the magistrate in investigations by implementing real-time processing (in French, TTR – Traitement en temps réel).
Traditionally founded on the work from legal proceedings that were brought to a close by investigators, the work of a prosecutors evolved with the establishment of telephone lines, making it possible for the magistrate to intervene during the investigation. The establishment of this managerial setup however had the effect of impairing the work of on-call magistrates as they began concentrating their energy on constant follow-up in common-law litigations (Mouhanna 2004, 2010, 2013). It provoked a disengagement in the police hierarchy that until then had occupied the role of a contact. In the end, far from affirming the authority of the magistrate over the management of litigations, real-time processing had the objective of subjecting it to the unfiltered pressure of the activity of police agents (Mouhanna 2010; Beaume 2014).
What it could not do at the start of the investigation process, the legal authority now tries to do after. Since 2010, the Ministry of Justice has had the goal of giving the police more jurisdiction through an increase in authorizations and controls by magistrates of investigative acts in order to better protect individual liberties. Encouraged by the increasing requirements of European law, this evolution relies on the strategic resources that are magistrates in the role of actor: to say what is legal or what is just. We notice, at this point, that these initiatives have generated an effect of avoidance among investigators in favor of more supple procedures (e.g. relying on voluntary hearings of suspects in place of police custody). They seem to favor the spread of extra judiciary investigative powers in matters of internal security operations (law No. 2015-912 from July 24, 2015, relative to intelligence).
The legal authority finds itself tied to the police hierarchy in a relationship that oscillates between cooperation and competition. Even if the chief of a police unit does not fully master the legal ramifications of an investigation, he controls the activity of investigators through their organization, career, resources and operational priorities. He does not handle the prosecution but defines the work process and ensures coordination with other services.
Nevertheless, in practice, through the diversity of their bureaucratic missions, distance from the field and high turnover, unit chiefs do not have enough control over investigations or investigators. Contrary to the officer in the army who is expected to lead his men into battle […], the police middle manager with an equivalent rank is only someone who can do much to harm his subordinates and little to help them” (Bittner 1970, p. 143).
If the legal authority and the police hierarchy can be considered “apathetic” actors in the sense of the theory of actor strategies, the investigator appears, in the end, to be the real “strategic” actor of the criminal investigative process.
Armed with a mastery of information (knowledge) as well as investigative techniques (know-how) and the availability to pursue his mission (ability to do), the investigator finds himself, in essence, in an advantageous position vis-à-vis his dual hierarchy, judicial and administrative. He masters information, the strategic resource in an investigation, and is given a certain amount of discretionary leeway in his communication. Motivated by a professional culture founded on autonomy and the desire for prestige, his practice falls into the undefined zones of procedure and process. Although he seeks the recognition of legal and hierarchical authorities, the investigator is an irreplaceable actor on whom the others depend.
From an Arendtian perspective, it is possible to consider that the judge’s mastery of procedure and the police chief’s mastery of process manifest an auctoritas, an authority more honorific than real, characterized by the mere power to refuse. From this perspective, the investigator, on the other hand, has postestas, the concrete power of action and production (for the distinction between auctoritas and potestas, see Arendt (1969)). The investigator’s power must however be further explained, although it is important in the perimeter of the investigation, it is inoperative beyond that, where the legal authority and the police hierarchy reclaim their general prerogative to direct the penal process and the management of services.
Figure 1.1.Actor strategies in an investigation.
This brief overview of the staging of an investigation in its structural and dynamic aspects provides an explicit and tacit understanding. It invites us to attempt to model the investigative process.
1.3.3. The investigation as a modellable system
Capitalizing on the set of elements discussed thus far, it seems possible to sketch out a general diagram for the investigation as a system. The diversity and variability of parameters make it into a complex system.
An investigation is often reduced to an exploration of investigative leads in the context of a linear process going from the acknowledgement of a crime to the indictment of its author. It is thus often seen as a flat plane. Nevertheless, from the perspective of information theory, an investigation can be analyzed as something much more uneven, simultaneously iterative, incremental and adaptive. It thus lends itself to a systemic approach, perhaps even a cybernetic one.
The study of the process of investigating prompts us to think about it in terms of entry points (input) and exits (output), system limits (frontier), flows, interactions and retroactions. The functioning of a system is considered from the perspective of its effects in order to try to define the causes. This teleological approach consists, for example, of studying closed cases to establish the factors of elucidation. It implies approaching the system through its components and their interactions in a statistical (synchronic) and dynamic (diachronic) framework. The existence of a real or supposed crime is the source processor of an investigative system. The revelation of this crime is the necessary, but not sufficient, condition for opening an investigation.
At the other end of the investigative process, the output processor is the closing of the investigation, which constitutes an act of dispossession by the investigator in favor of the magistrate. The latter is thus called upon to decide what the follow-up will be (charges, alternative modes of conflict resolution and abandoned cases).
Through these entry and exit points, the investigative system retroacts with its environment. At the start, we saw that an investigation generates preventative and dissuasive effects capable of having an effect on crime. It also produces information that could help open new investigations. Afterward, the decision of the magistrate can have influence on an investigation, either by calling for its re-opening given the collection of complementary elements or, more rarely, through a mechanism of feedback based on experience where the magistrate communicates his expectations to the police officer.
In terms of its internal function, a general investigative system can be expressed as three subsystems. By analogy with the human body, an investigation could thus distinguish its nervous system (actors and their interactions), its skeleton (strategies and functions) and the muscles (acts and actions).
Without needing to return to it, we recall that we have already dealt with the question of “actors”, their official relationships and their strategic behavior.
In terms of “acts and actions”, we have also discussed the cycle of information. This makes it possible, in a flexible manner, to go from a basic information profile, often uncertain, toward a final information profile, unified and able to contribute to the manifestation of truth.
Alternating between collecting, processing, analyzing and implementing data, this cycle can operate in an elusive manner (i.e. the absence of an investigation), a routine one (i.e. standardized and repetitive processing), an attentive one (i.e. personalized treatment) or a perseverant one (i.e. reinforced treatment). The process is iterative since it is applied several times according to a continuous loop. It is incremental since it becomes enriched by the elements collected to improve the information. It is adaptive since changes in the context are taken into account to improve the relevance of investigations.
The last subsystem, the “strategies and functions”, is based on the relative linearity of the investigative process. This process combines four functions: acknowledgement of the crime (C), identification of the suspect (I), localization/hearing for the implicated person (L) and administering the criminal proceedings (A). These functions can be expressed in many ways that give shape to investigative strategies.
On the one hand, with reactive strategies, the actions of the investigator begin because of an exterior event. This is the classic “investigation” where a crime leads to an investigation (C→I→L→A), and in flagrante delicto, where the author is caught red-handed at the moment of committing the crime (L→C→I→A).
On the other hand, proactive strategies are initiated by the investigator himself. This is an “instigation” where information leads to an investigation that makes it possible to gather the elements that will lead to a suspect (I→A→C→L) and the “initiative” where the proper orientation of police checks makes it possible to notice the offense and catch the criminal (L→C→I→A).
Figure 1.2A.Criminal investigation system model.
Figure 1.2B.Criminal investigation system model.
Figure 1.2C.Criminal investigation system model.
This conception of the model requires us to introduce, finally, several forms of effectors. Some are stabilizers (i.e. the procedure and the processes) or motors (i.e. the practical aspects of the investigation and their adaptation to the circumstances). Others facilitate or inhibit the unfolding of the investigation by acting upon the components of the system. They act, for example, upon:
the actors (e.g. a relationship of competition or cooperation between services, the investigator’s lack of engagement or combativeness);
the processes (e.g. encumbered managerial logic or efficient organization, respecting the culture of the profession or overturning the ends and the means);
the procedures (e.g. secrets in investigations or transparency);
decision-making (e.g. bias in reasoning or wisdom, discretionary power of agents or a spirit of initiative);
the circumstances (e.g. a collaboration by the population conditioned by its trust or defiance with respect to the police).
All of these elements can be sketched out as in the models in Figures 1.2(A–C).
An investigation is a complex system (due to its multiple components and dynamics) that cannot be reduced to its model. It must also be repositioned within its environment and considered in terms of the interactions it maintains with it.
1.4. The criminal investigation in interaction with its environment
We have seen that an investigation is a contingent system since it is mutable and homeostatic. Its position must therefore be seen relative to its environment. It is thus useful to decenter the sometimes idealizing way we look at it and accept the idea that it is a mode of knowledge production conditioned by circumstances, is non-trivial and compelled to evolve.
1.4.1. An efficiency often linked to its context of deployment
A study on the factors of elucidation in an investigation, focusing on the last 50 years of criminological research, lets us identify a large number of variables and potential explanations for the elucidation of a crime (Barlatier 2017).
Three doctrinal currents can be identified. The first approach focuses on the indictment process and tends to consider an investigation as an oriented and discretionary process that functions according to informal rules. The second approach studies the characteristics of an investigation and considers that its elucidation boils down, to different degrees, to either the circumstances of the crime or the means of investigation used by the investigators. The third approach is founded more upon the environmental factors and seeks to determine the extent to which the characteristics of the victim, the circumstances of the facts and the social context had an influence on the elucidation of an investigation.
An examination of 350 studies on the subject and the meta-analysis of 110 of those made it possible to identify the variables that influence an investigation (ibid.). These factors can be summarized on the basis of a relatively simple distinction between:
non-institutional factors, independent of the system, such as the social context, the circumstances of the crime, the profile of the victim and its author, as well as their interactions;
institutional factors, dependent on the system, such as the profile of the investigator, the way the investigation is conducted, the investigative techniques used and the combination thereof.
In this context, studies on the resolution of investigations tend to demonstrate that the non-institutional factors are decisive in terms of the success of investigations. The witness statement of the victim and especially the fact that he may know the author are the most common factors leading to a resolution. Although more serious and more sensitive, crimes of assault against people are most often solved. A contrario, the most anonymous and anodyne crimes, such as burglary or fraud, are the most complex to solve even though they constitute the most common and least serious incidents.
The environment of a crime therefore has a determining effect on the success of investigations.
Returning to the idea of mastery in our approach, we thus consider that the investigator inherits an initial information profile that he does not master. It is in his power, then, to optimize this basic profile to attempt to provide a favorable lead in the investigation. His mission is thus suffused with stoicism: he must accept what he does not master and prove himself virtuous in terms of his actions.
Figure 1.3.Factors influencing the resolution of investigations.
This is not however to conclude that an investigator is innocuous. His intervention is essential. Approached with art and methodology, investigative work is capable of making a decisive difference by making the most of the information at hand. Coming down as much to the qualities of the investigator as to the proper organization of the process, an investigation may be considered from the triple dimension of art, craft and science. It can therefore be approached from the framework of a performative act seeking efficiency (i.e. results vis-à-vis fixed objectives) as much as it seeks performance (i.e. results vis-à-vis the means employed) and quality (i.e. results vis-à-vis the expectations of participants in the investigation). Nevertheless, this approach must not be in any way reductive. It must respect the complexity of the system.
1.4.2. Functioning that must not be reduced to a trivial mechanism
Approaching the question of performance in investigative work is equivalent to asking what the relevance of the investigation is as a social apparatus that produces a certain kind of knowledge.
It also raises the question of the ability to master the investigative process to allow it to reach its objectives. Is an investigation a trivial process whose parameters can be known, with a programmed implementation and anticipated results? Is it, on the contrary, a non-trivial process whose factors are independent of those that get it started, or, even more, whose results are random? Between these two extremes, a complete array of solutions can be imagined.
In terms of the optimal management of information, what other method besides cybernetics might be more appropriate for analyzing an investigation? According to the physicist and philosopher Heinz von Foerster, the mistake we make is in reducing an undecidable problem to the solutions that are traditionally adopted for decidable problems (von Foerster 2000). There is no sense in reducing a non-trivial system to a trivial system. An investigation could not be mastered through exact science alone. The solutions attached to it deserve to be explored through approaches that are equal to the complexity of the phenomenon. They must take into consideration both the constants and the repetitions, as well as anomalies and fortuitous features, imagining what is certain as much as what is probable or random.
Understanding an investigation in its complexity means refusing to impoverish it and deform the realities of it for the sake of having the impression of mastery. Thus, we consider it preferable to attempt to master this phenomenon through a parametric approach rather than try to reduce it to some arbitrary factors. Thinking in terms of parameters consists of positioning the cursor along a decisional axis, at times generic, but most often casuistic, in order to make a choice that is just.
This consists, for example, of situating oneself within the continuum between art, craft and science for the conduct of investigations. One must thus arbitrate between the margin for initiative that should be left to professionals and the standardization of certain tasks, between the liberty of field actors and the governance of investigations. Depending on operations and circumstances, it is thus alternatively preferable to call on the experience and discernment of the investigator, on good practices identified within the profession, on the objectivization of decisions through semi-structured professional judgements, on motivational techniques that impact the choice of actors or on the standardization of processes.
This parametric approach relies on the postulate that it is possible to determine the performance factors of an investigation. It supposes the possibility of identifying the overarching parameters, which are in tension and on which it is possible to act.
From this perspective, it would be useful to create a self-learning apparatus concerned with criminal investigations. This feedback would make it possible to understand investigations and guide modes of action in future investigations. From a systemic point of view, the idea is to create a retroaction that provokes the adaptation of the system. An investigation would therefore be compelled to learn from itself and break free from a deterministic approach in order to adopt a dynamic approach where knowledge about practices is capitalized upon with the goal of constantly improving the process.
This approach must integrate the existence of non-institutional factors, of which we discussed the strong outside influence on investigations. It must, moreover, deal with institutional factors from a simultaneously synchronic and diachronic perspective. It must then diversify the perspectives on investigations through the notions of profile (i.e. victim, suspect and investigator), kinematics (i.e. the path the investigation takes, the volume of acts and the patterns of rupture) and relational diagrams (i.e. the succession of causes and effects between observations and investigative acts, the combination and congruence of investigations, etc.).
By seeking to learn from itself, an investigation would respond to the methodological canons of a police force that is guided by the conclusive elements of research (evidence-based policing; Lum and Koper 2017; Mitchell and Huey 2019).
In this way, it would fulfill its other essential tactic, that of a police force guided by information (intelligence-led policing; Ratcliffe 2016), which presses us to adapt investigations to the evolution of modes of production of knowledge.
