Suchergebnisse

<i>Liberating Sentencing Policy !
The Place of Open Prisons in Penitentiary Policies </i>

Penitentiary policies have undergone a certain number of changes influenced in particular by the quest for alternatives to incarceration and the desire on the part of society for a 'zero' risk guarantee. These transformations may be the object of various critiques which suggest the need to underline the necessity to reorganise the two functions of open prisons -surveillance and social rehabilitation.

The penal use of prison is often considered as the breaking point in historigraphy. One cannot deny the fundamental transformations implied by the prison and consequently the penitentiary. But their use does not signify a total break with previous repressive policies. The study of the American situation shows that servitude and hard labour may be presented as the bridge between two different repressive logics. Thus servitude was first substituted to capital punishment ; incarceration then appeared as the material modality necessary to the execution of the sanction.

While the prison population of most occidental countries increased dramatically, the incarceration rate in Germany decreased significantly twice during the past thirty years: first in 1969 and second between 1983 and 1991. The present research tries to find out the reasons for these decreases. The first decrease is clearly the result of the 1969 reform of the German criminal law (reform which had positive as well as negative repercussions). The second decrease cannot be explained by legal reform and seems to result from a change of attitude on the part of judges and prosecutors towards criminals.

Reform of the Penitentiary Map : Towards a Rationalisation and Modernisation of the French Penitentiary System

The historic development of the french penitentiary System has brought about a number of geographical disparities. Consequently, reform of the penitentiary map has not so much aimed to increase the capacity to accept inmates as to harmonize of the geographical spread of places according to a general indicator. Moreover, this reform has tended to the reaffirmation of a number of principles regarding the functioning of the public penitentiary service, such as detention in individual cells, a progressive approach to the period of incarceration, and localness as a factor in placing detainees.

Based upon criminal trials, this paper explores the decline of death penalty (will be abolished in 1874) during the eighteenth century in the Republic of Geneva. Low rates of hangings reflected the decline of murders and other violent crimes. The arguments elaborated by various Attorney generals in charge of prosecuiting murderers and robbers revels a precocious reformism arguing for the rehabilitation of the convicts by their incarceration. A great part of the judicial reformism developped by Calvinist and enlightened Attorneys from the end of 1750's, foreshadows the modernization of penology which will take place at the beginning of the 19th century.

The prison reform announced in 2000 had two manifest objectives: humanitarian motives (improve conditions of incarceration) & motives of security (reassert state authority in the prisons). It mainly involved replacing the dormitories with one- to three-inmate cells. These dormitories were, however, places where socialization & politicization occurred, particularly among Kurdish & extreme leftwing organizations. Inmate resistance took on the form of a hunger strike which, for various reasons, was soon isolated from public opinion, & therefore took a more desperate & radical turn. In conducting their reform, the Turkish authorities responded to European pressure by choosing among the demands expressed by European institutions those which it suited them to implement, regardless of any priority Europe had given them. Adapted from the source document.

Responses to Juvénile Delinquency
In 1998 Christine Lazerges and Jean-Pierre Balduck made a report to the Prime Minister on behalf of the inter-ministerial taskforce on the prevention and treatment of juvenile delinquency. The 135 proposals contained in this report are oriented around the two axes of prevention and repression. Better preventive measures require mobilisation on the part of those responsible for socialisation, in schools and through integration into urban policy issues particularly. Introduction of the repressive measures was initiated by the application of the whole spectrum of measures introduced by the Order of 2 November 1945 on juvenile delinquency, followed by the renewed responses of the police and judicial authorities achieved via a greater specialisation of police, judicial and incarceration structures.

The aim of this article is to provide a mainly quantitative study of incarcerated populations, in relation to their size, their structure, their evolution, and the mechanisms of their renewal. Three dimensions have been emphasised: time, space and individuals. Chronological analysis provides a base for the study over time of the phenomenon of carcéral «inflation», using the three measures of population, flows and length of incarceration, and looking at the evolution of socio-demographic and penal structures, input processes, projections, and studying particular events. International comparisons include the creation of the annual penal statistics of the Council of Europe (S. PACE), as they affected the prisons and non-carceral penalties, allowing the growth of research on criminality and criminal justice. The last type of research has been focused on analysing cohorts and concerns three areas: the study of penal careers and lenghts of detention, managing longterm prisoners, and recidivism rates.

Records of civil judicial procedures, interdiction and judicial adviser, throw a new light on three categories of deviant conducts dealt with by justice courts in the nineteenth-century : madness, weakness of intellect and prodigality. The definitions given by jurists to these « affections » allow the historian to perceive the scope of « abnormal » conducts susceptible to be punished by a loss of civil rights. However, recourse to civil justice constituted just one possibility for regulating deviant behavior. But in this particular kind of response the leading actor was the family. In addition, relatives were adopting different strategies, before or beside the transfer of the conflict to the judicial sphere, in order to cope with a troublesome individual. The state and local administration were more active at the institutional level and in the incarceration of too problematic individuals (usually mentally ill persons of a dangerous character). The whole analysis contributes to a better understanding of the respective functions of family, justice and the state in the social regulation of several forms of deviant behavior in the nineteenth-century.

It is now more than ten years (Landre ville, 1987) that I drew attention to a new technology for controlling delinquents: electronic surveillance (S.E.), normally called in English, « electronic monitoring » (E.M.), which was experimented with for the first time for misdemeanours in the United States in 1983. At first, it was used almost exclusively for «home confinement» or «home incarceration» - different types of confinement at home under electronic surveillance. However, the technology has developed rapidly, and new markets are being conquered, both in terms of those being detained and in terms of geographic spread. The technology has started to be used in Europe. The companies, as well as technical experts, have not stopped experimenting with new technological forms and new applications and have created means of surveillance which are more and more sophisticated. In this article, we survey the development of S.E. in North America and in Europe, looking at the diversification of the field of surveillance and at a number of criticisms of and reflections on this new method of control.

Ces dernières années, la surpopulation des prisons américaines a suscité un grand intérêt pour ce que l'on appelle Home incarceration. Pour plusieurs, cette mesure est d'autant plus attrayante qu'elle peut être assistée par la surveillance électronique. La surveillance électronique des contrevenants a été proposée il y a un peu plus de vingt ans et les premiers projets pilotes, dans le système pénal, ont eu lieu en 1983 et 1984. Ils se sont répandus très rapidement, de sorte qu'à la fin de 1986, il y avait quarante cinq programmes du genre dans vingt états américains.
Après avoir exposé les techniques utilisées actuellement, l'auteur explore les avenues que pourrait emprunter cette technologie avant la fin du siècle. La seconde partie de l'article est consacrée à l'analyse des menaces pour les libertés individuelles ainsi que des risques d'escalade du contrôle pénal, que constitue la surveillance électronique. Enfin l'accent est mis sur le fait que cette technologie participera à la transformation du contrôle social.

The first juridical text referring directly to children is the decree of July 19th 1791 from « La Convention » which founded reformatories for youngsters under age 21. This text precised that the youngs shut up at their family's request had to be parted from the condemned ones.
Until then incarcerations, tortures, judgements including the death penally were imposed to children as well as to adults. However the two texts of Septembre 25th and October 6th 1791, both imbued with « the triumph of Reason on Obscurantism », remained without outcomes for want of financial means. The 1810 Penal Code concerning minors' misdemeanours did remain in force until 1912. Nevertheless two dates are to be remembered : during the Restauration, the establishment of« La Petite Roquette », the first improvment prison, and in 1860 the creation of the agricole reformatory settlement in Saint-Hilaire.
Ordered on March 22th 1841, another important law controlled the work in manufactures for children age 8 to 16.
Finally from 1927 to 1974, eleven laws and decrees founded the « Maisons d'Education surveillée » (1927), the « Direction de l'Education surveillée » (1945) and the juridictions for children (1958). They also established the age of majority at age 18 (1974).