Studying crime statistics, crime reports received by mayors or the production of government measures is not enough to understand how insecurity becomes a municipal issue and how it is promoted as a municipal policy category. Using a diachronic and geographic comparison, this paper shows that political instability leads to the politicization of insecurity and that turnover at municipal level is conducive to an administrative institutionalization of the security issue. The content and the form of public policy are not informed by objective problems, media injunctions and social demands which would arise in a vacuum. Crime statistics and social demands are shaped and highlighted by political competition.