International Journal on Criminology Volume 1, Number 1, Fall 2013 | Page 18

Restorative Justice
legitimate and implement the criminalization of prohibited acts and/or behaviors. The
victim therefore appears just as logically to be a person who has been harmed. Their
suffering must be personal, genuine, socially recognized as unacceptable, and liable to
justify some action being taken in favor of the individual concerned. This may include, as
appropriate, the naming of the crime or the event, medical treatment or psychotherapy,
psychological or social support, and/or compensation. In this notional context, the penalty
(in the broad sense of sentences and security measures) for the infringement of essential
social values resulting in harm being caused to a victim or victims consists in a
punishment (incompatible with any form of humiliation) being inflicted by the legal
authority of the group concerned or its representatives on anyone found criminally
responsible. It is oriented towards the social rehabilitation of the person concerned and,
more generally, towards restoring social harmony. 3
The crisis of the modern correctional system can easily be illustrated by a few
examples of punitive legal measures and practices. The increase in criminal legislation—
which is swelling at an exorbitant rate 4 —is so inflated that corresponding litigation
cannot be usefully processed. And yet "where there is inflation, there is depreciation:
when the law is long-winded, citizens stop paying attention". 5 The rate of dismissal of
complaints, denunciations, and reports by the criminal investigation department confirms
this categorically: eight cases out of 10. Individual deterrence through criminal
prohibition is scarcely more effective. Of the 15,000 officially registered prohibited acts
(there are certainly many more, closer to 30,000, scattered throughout a range of
documents of variable scope), criminal jurisdictions appear to use only 200 offenses, of
which 60, moreover, account for 90% of convictions. 6 Widespread decriminalization is
therefore urgently required and liable to return 80% of the conflicts which today are all
too easily established as offenses to their original dispute status.
The social reaction to crime, although often disproportionate to the seriousness of the
offenses committed (heavily concentrated around property crime), is resolutely harsh,
with “prison having colonized punishment”. 7 Yet the significant rise in recent decades of
a strategy of “prisonization” 8 (over 100,000 years of prison sentences handed out in
2008) 9 despite endemic prison overcrowding (66,915 prisoners incarcerated on June 1,
2012, for 57,127 prison beds), 10 the doubling of the average length of sentences for low-
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
3 . For more on these points, see Cario, La Justice restaurative; R. Cario, Introduction aux sciences
criminelles. Pour une approche globale et intégrée du phénomène criminel, Vol. 4, Sixth
Edition, 2008, 177etseq.; R. Cario, De l’effraction du lien intersubjectif à la restauration sociale,
Vol. 2-1, Fourth Edition, 2012, forthcoming.
4 . J. Carbonnier, Droit et passion du droit sous la Vè République, Flammarion, 1997, 107 et seq.
The author further stresses that “the trouble with the Penal Code appears to come more from an
impression of perpetual propagation” [translated from French, “avec le Code pénal, le trouble
procéderait plutôt d’une impression d’accouchement perpetual”], 136.
5 . Conseil d’Etat, Rapport public 1991, La Documentation Française, 1992-43, Coll. Etudes et
documents, 20 [translated from French, “qui dit inflation dit dévalorisation: quand le droit
bavarde, le citoyen ne lui prête plus qu’une oreille distraite”].
6 . Y. Charpenel, Les rendez-vous de la politique pénale. Concilier devoir de justice et exigence de
sécurité, A. Colin, Coll. Sociétales, 2006, 57.
7 . R. Merle and A. Vitu, Traité de droit criminel. Problèmes généraux de la science criminelle,
Tome 1, Droit pénal général, Editions Cujas, Seventh Edition. 1997, 900, citing M. Foucault.
8 . G. Kellens, Punir. Pénologie et droit des sanctions pénales, 2000, Liège: Editions juridiques de
l’Université de Liège, 76 et seq. and ref. cited.
9 . P. Tournier, in Arpenter le champ pénal, 2010-175, arpenter-champ-penal.blogspot.com
10 . Tournier, Arpenter le Champ Pénal, pierre-victortournier.blogspot.com.
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