International Journal on Criminology Volume 1, Number 1, Fall 2013 | Página 19

International Journal on Criminology
to mid-level felony, the increase in custodial sentences of between five and 10 years, and
the staggering drop in probation measures and alternative sanctions have had no effect on
the volume of infringements. 11 Similarly, the average rate of recidivism, including
recidivism by released prisoners, is abnormally high, except—and this is essential to
note—for recidivism in serious, violent crime, which remains exceptional. 12 And what
should be made of the increasingly frequent incarceration of individuals who were
mentally incapacitated at the time of the offense?
The morphology of criminal activity does not justify such severity. A vast majority of
offenses are misdemeanors to mid-level felonies involving commonplace property crime,
consistent perhaps with the importance placed on the possession of goods and property in
our excessively consumerist society. 13 The offenders come in large part from
underprivileged social groups stricken by various types of poverty. 14 In such conditions,
very close attention must be paid to the shape of the criminal "market", the strictly
economic, perverse principles of which seem to paralyze all humanistic thoughts and
actions towards the victims of social exclusion in our Western civilization.
As such, the overly prison-based approach has significant penological shortcomings.
Paradoxically, sentences served within the community (currently imposed for just over
one in ten convictions) seem not only more proportionate, but also less costly (except for
the electronic monitoring of offenders) and more effective in reducing the social
marginalization of convicted offenders.
Today, the loss of confidence in the criminal justice system is patently obvious. It is
compounded by a misperception of criminal insecurity which, unlike the other forms of
insecurity that plague some of our poorest citizens, is demonized politically and in the
media and is wrongly equated with the fear of crime arising from the experience of
victimization. So much so that victims, grouped with increasing frequency into
associations to defend their a priori legitimate interests, have become heavily involved in
the penal scene, and all the more so for the fact that they were long excluded from it.
At the same time, thanks to the obligations of a fair trial, victims are once again
offered the place that they should never have lost, in their capacity as stakeholder
alongside the offender and the state prosecutor. There can be no judicial truth (which is
necessarily a joint construction) without that of the victim. Equality of arms is a
democratic necessity, a requirement consistent with human rights and the fundamental
principles of criminal law. Such a position is not self-evident, and there is much criticism
regarding the current upsurge in “victimhood”, allegedly the source of the increased
severity of the social and correctional response towards offenders. Based, it seems, on the
typically French rhetoric of denunciation, intellectualized views on the “fantasy”,
“classic”, and “rival” victim do not stand up to a concrete analysis of the “ordinary”
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11 . A. Kensey, Prison et récidive. Des peines de plus en plus longues : la société est-elle vraiment
mieux protégée ?, A. Colin, Coll. Sociétales, 2007, 79-159.
12 . S. Portelli, Récidivistes. Chroniques de l’humanité ordinaire, Grasset, 2008; Kensey, Prison et
récidive, 161-219; A. Benaouda, A. Kensey, La récidive des condamnés à la perpétuité, in
Cahiers d’études pénitentiaires et criminologiques, 2008-24, multigraph., pub. Administration
pénitentiaire.
13 . On the demography of criminal activity, see Cario, Introduction aux sciences criminelles, p.
39ets. P.V. Tournier, Dictionnaire de démographie pénale. Des outils pour arpenter le champ
pénal, L’Harmattan, Coll. Criminologie, 2010.
14 . M. Chauvière et al., L’indigent et le délinquant. Pénalisation de la pauvreté et privatisation de
l’action sociale, Fondation Copernic, 2008; L. Mucchielli, L’invention de la violence. Des peurs,
des chiffres, des faits, Fayard, 2011.
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