International Journal on Criminology Volume 6, Number 1, Spring 2018 | Page 76

International Journal on Criminology • Volume 6, Number 1 • Spring 2018
Sanction as a Moral Fact: A Contribution to
the Study of the “Krimein”
Lucien Samir Oulhabib
Now the term ‘unjust’ is held to apply both to the man who breaks
the law and the man who takes more than his due, the unfair man. 1
Abstract
The aim of this article is to revisit the transition from the individualization
to the personalization of punishment. Systemic interactionism
(delinquent–victim–judge) has indeed proven to be something
of an impasse by structuring penal law around the criminal,
whereas the focus should rather be the victim, and, through him or
her, the values that underpin the being-together of the democratic
sociopolitical pact or the very basis of the rule of law.
It is the latter, ultimately, which has made it possible to increasingly
accurately characterize what is referred to as “criminal” action (krimein).
That is to say, an act that may be designated and judged in
the name of the equality of citizens toward one another.
The violation of this equality necessarily triggers the sanction,
which must be applied to its fullest extent, because justice embodies
that which enables one to be, and to be equal, together. Yet the
crime as an injustice ruptures this equality. It is therefore this very
rupture that is sanctioned.
1. REVISITING THE DURKHEIMIAN NOTION OF SANCTION
What is “crime”? That which is “revealed” through “punishment,” replies
Durkheim, as others have noted, 2 and as though he were drawing literally
upon the very etymology of the krimein: 3 “It is not of course
1 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1956), 257.
2 Raymond Gassin, Criminologie (Paris: Dalloz, 2007), 8, 45; Denis Szabo, “La nouvelle criminologie
et la délinquance,” Délinquance juvénile au Québec 8, no. 1-2 (1975): 179; Patrick Pharo, Morale et
sociologie: Le sens et les valeurs entre nature et culture (Paris: Gallimard, 2004), 99.
3 “The word ‘crime’ derives from the Latin word crimen (-inis), which originally meant ‘legal decision.’
This word derives in turn from the Greek krimein, that is to say, ‘to judge,’ ‘to choose,’ ‘to
separate.’ In classical Latin, the word crimen also assumed the meaning of ‘accusation’ or ‘charge’ ....
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doi: 10.18278/ijc.6.1.6