Administrative policing can fall under either local or national jurisdiction, but does not include searching for, or arresting, the perpetrator(s) of a particular offense.
[4] The separation of administrative and judicial policing functions dates from the 1795 Code of Offences and Penalties, and is still in force today.
This functional distinction does not necessarily imply an organizational separation: a single organization may perform both types of policing: an example is the National Gendarmerie.
[citation needed] Administrative policing is an activity intended to assure the ordre public but does not include searching for, or arresting, the perpetrator of a given breach of the law.
Good order is a more imprecise concept which has allowed the scope of the administrative police to expand and take into account morality and the protection of individuals against themselves.
Article 12 of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen of 1789 is a foundational text for that authority, Initially, administrative judges only took immorality into account if it might provoke a significant disorder.
The Conseil d'État can also take into account esthetic issues (2 August 1924), Leroux, 18 February 1972, Chambre syndicale des entreprises artisanales du bâtiment de la Haute-Garonne: the Conseil d'État overturned an order of the mayor of Toulouse that for esthetic reasons very precisely regulated the dimensions and shape of funerary monuments in the cemetery).
But this decision is outdated, and currently put back in question by the law of 19 December 2008[8] which gave the mayor police power over the monuments under the supervision of the administrative judge.
In the latter case it applies only to certain categories of person (foreigners), of places (railway stations, airports), or of activities (hunting, fishing, cinema).
[16] The president of the Conseil départemental has been a police authority since the loi du 2 mars 1982 [fr],[17] in the area of traffic circulation on departmental roads outside of municipalities.