International Journal on Criminology Volume 1, Number 1, Fall 2013 | Page 16

The Art of Criminology in a Hostile Environment
criminals. Victims are therefore seen as an obstacle to dealing with delinquents. 19 Does
this mean that these researchers are incapable of feeling equal empathy for the
delinquents and the victims, or is it because consideration of victims casts doubt on the
current penal process? It should be noted that even the first criminologists, albeit
incidentally, drew attention in their work to the inevitable consideration of the victim
within the penal response to the criminal act. Thus, founders of criminology such as
Enrico Ferri and Raffaele Garofalo thought that remedying the harm to victims of
criminal acts was a necessary objective of punishment.
These considerations led France’s National Criminology Conference to state that
“criminology is ‘the scientific study of the criminal phenomenon and the responses that
are applied or could be applied by society’, taking into account penal flaws, deviations
and contraventions. It has a triple objective: Prevention, control and treatment. Current
public policy is used to provide a context and perspective for study. Each of the three
objectives gives rise to its own research path and content: Prevention may be primary,
secondary or tertiary; control involves identifying, characterizing and stopping the
criminal and the consequences of crime (the procedures, the forensic, psychiatric and
psychological examinations, the alternatives to prosecution); treatment poses questions
regarding the rights of parties, help for victims, reintegration or rehabilitation,
restorative responses, compensation or mediation. These research paths require
experienced and “certified” specialists.
One hundred and twenty-eight years after Durkheim, 57 years after the Paris
Congress, with criminology now also taught in France (officially at the National
Conservatory Arts and Crafts only), it is becoming an emerging discipline. It no longer
needs scientific justification or concrete acknowledgement. What it needs now is to rally
society.
About the Author
Alain Bauer serves as Professor of Criminology at the French National Conservatory for
Arts and Crafts (Paris) and as a Senior Research Fellow at the John Jay College of
Criminal Justice (New York) and the University of Law and Political Science of China
(Beijing).
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
19 R. Cario. “Qui a peur des victimes,” Ajpénal (2004): 434-437.
15