International Journal on Criminology Volume 2, Number 1, Spring 2014 | Page 50

International Journal on Criminology
into society. 6 A survey conducted in 2009,
but published in June 2013(!), 7 examining a
representative sample of the French population,
revealed that three-quarters of people
asked did not believe that prison was an
effective way of combating recidivism. As a
logical consequence, 64% were in favor of
adjustments to sentences.
France’s 1808 Criminal Procedure
Code officially allowed crime victims to
bring civil proceedings before the criminal
courts. This is particularly envied in common
law, where the victim has only witness
status. Nevertheless, it was not until the
second half of the twentieth century, when
the necessary accompanying rights were
introduced, that it really became possible
for victims and their families to seize this
important opportunity, and obtain full and
effective compensation. This evolution has
only really become visible and measurable
over the last four decades. The 1980s was
the decade of the right to recompense for
damages suffered (fixed in 1977, then full
and nonsubsidiary from 1990). The 1990s
saw the introduction of the right to victim
support, with victim support services created
from 1982, and federated within the
National Institute for Victim Support and
Mediation (Institut national d’aide aux victimes
et de médiation: inavem.org) from
1986. The first decade of the 2000s were
ones of the rationalization of victim rights,
particularly with regard to their subjective
rights. The circular of July 13, 1998,
brought the first reasoned criminal policy
on victims. The first public policy for victim
support was drafted out in the Lienemann
report, submitted to the prime minister on
March 29, 1999. The law of June 15, 2000,
was largely inspired by this report, and
aimed to set out a real status for crime victims.
The 2010s seemingly are attempting
to move towards the restorative approach
to crime. In this approach, both the victim
and the perpetrator (as well as their
family and the communities to which they
belong) are placed at the heart of the available
measures (including community, legal,
psychological, and/or social measures), in
a taming (Saint-Exupéry 1943) or adaptive
approach. The most promising illustrations
of this, complementing the dominant penal
response (which is currently too inflationary),
have been restorative meetings like
mediation, family group conferences, sentencing
circles, 8 and detainee-victim meetings,
despite the avoidable risk of them being
exploited (on this evolution, see Cario
2001; Lopez, Portelli, and Clément 2007;
Strickler 2009; Ministère de la Justice et des
Libertés 2012; D’Hauteville 2013).
Without such a strategy of inclusion,
involvement, and collaboration of all those
wishing to take part, being put in place
by trained professionals, the whole penal
chain, social reintegration attempts, overall
reparation, the restoration of social peace
(regarding the protagonists, those around
them, and society as a whole), and the reestablishment
of social harmony can be nothing
more than wishful thinking (Zehr 2002;
Cario 2010). Although it is not possible to
describe all the dimensions of the impact of
victimological theories on victim rights, it
nevertheless seems appropriate to examine
their interconnections chronologically and
on two levels, namely looking at repairing
6
Incarceration also significantly worsens the inequalities already suffered by prisoners in terms of health and
family life, both during and after imprisonment. On this, see Wildeman and Muller (2012).
7
Belmokhtar and Benzakri (2013). See also Lévy (2013), which refers to a 2011 issue of Infostat Justice entitled
“Les Français et la prison” (2009 survey), not listed as such in the collection.
8
On this, see § 46 of Directive 2012/29/EU, to be enshrined in French law before November 16, 2015.
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