sûreté

Sûreté is a French noun that primarily denotes security or safety, but in everyday and governmental usage it is also used to refer to police or investigative functions. The word comes from Old French sûreté, derived from Latin securitas, with the circumflex indicating a historical vowel change in the spelling.

In contemporary use, sûreté can describe general security concepts (for example, public safety) as well as the investigative arm of a police service. In Canada, the term appears in official agency names such as Sûreté du Québec, the provincial police force of Quebec, which conducts criminal investigations, highway patrol, and provincial policing outside major cities. In other French-speaking regions, including parts of Switzerland and Belgium, sûreté is used in the names of cantonal or regional security or police units and can function as a synonym for police or for a specific investigative division.

Historically, the term la Sûreté referred to a detective or criminal-investigations police service in France, most notably in reference to Paris and the national investigative apparatus. Over time, its functions were reorganized within the modern police structures, but the historical name persists in literature and in some regional or legacy contexts.

Beyond formal agencies, sûreté remains a general term in French for Internal security and for the protection of civil order, and it appears in legal, academic, and journalistic discourse as well as in the names of specific police units in French-speaking regions.