Laurent Mucchielli

About Laurent Mucchielli

Laurent Mucchielli is an internationally renowned sociologist whose work on various forms of crime, the feeling of insecurity, public prevention and security policies, as well as the media and political construction of fears, is authoritative.

He defended his doctoral thesis at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in 1996 and obtained his Habilitation to Direct Research at the University Paris 1-Sorbonne in 2004. He is currently a research director at CNRS, a lecturer at the University of Aix-Marseille, and at the Ecole Nationale de la Magistrature. He founded and directs the Observatoire régional de la délinquance et des contextes sociaux (ORDCS) in the Provence-Alpes-Côte-d’Azur region.

Several of his books have become classics and have illuminated social and political debate: Violences et insécurité. Fantasmes et réalités dans le débat français (2001), Crime et sécurité: l’état des savoirs (2002), Quand les banlieues brûlent. Retour sur les émeutes de novembre 2005 (2006), Gendarmes et voleurs (2007), La violence des jeunes en question (2009), L’invention de la violence. Des peurs, des chiffres, des faits (2011).

He created and directs the collection “Questions de société” at Champ social editions. He is also a member of the editorial board of the international journal Déviance et société and the European Group for Research on Normativities (GERN). He is also the editor-in-chief of a highly consulted website (“Délinquance, justice et autres questions de société”).

In his research, he combines statistical methods and field surveys to try to objectify realities while keeping a distance from the representations and emotions conveyed by common sense, political discourse, and the media.