Prefect

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Prefect" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (August 2015) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

In France, a prefect (left) is the State's representative in a department. A maritime prefect (right) is a military officer who exercises authority at sea over a given area known as an arrondissement. In Paris, the police prefect exercises special powers under the authority of the Minister of the Interior.

Prefect (from the Latin praefectus, substantive adjectival form of praeficere: "put in front", meaning in charge)^[1] is a magisterial title of varying definition, but essentially refers to the leader of an administrative area.

A prefect's office, department, or area of control is called a prefecture, but in various post-Roman empire cases there is a prefect without a prefecture or vice versa. The words "prefect" and "prefecture" are also used, more or less conventionally, to render analogous words in other languages, especially Romance languages.