The French State’s internal security system is characterised by an original and centralised architecture, inherited from its history, which now features, alongside the national police and gendarmerie, the contribution of private security, municipal police and citizen vigilance movements. Using the authors’ extensive cumulative empirical research, the article discusses the emergence of the security continuum reference framework and analyses the development of the various resources mobilized. It shows how the central government, far from letting itself be deprived of its prerogatives, has striven to take advantage of a movement of pluralization that it has overseen and promoted in a context characterized by both security and budgetary pressure.