L'épreuve de la probation

Abstract

L'article présente les principaux résultats d'une enquête réalisée en France auprès de personnes condamnées à des peines de probation. Partant du constat de la complexité du sens des peines, l'enquête cherche à saisir la forme spécifique de l'expérience vécue par les probationnaires. Celle-ci est éprouvée comme discordante et, si elle fonctionne malgré tout, elle induit une reconfiguration pénale de l'existence et une surcharge punitive. Les probationnaires font alors l'épreuve d'une situation fort paradoxale et sans commune mesure, dont le sens reste indexé à l'impératif d'en sortir.

Exploring the black box of French community supervision

“…There was further support from two national Parliamentary Acts in 2014 and 2019, which enshrined in French law that POs now had a duty to assess prisoners and probationers on a regular basis. Until these changes occurred, French probation had been based on a rather distant understanding of traditional case work called ‘socio-educative’ (Frenkiel-Peletier, 2021), consisting in advising offenders and unstructured individual support (Herzog-Evans, 2011), and legal and paperwork requirements from offenders (Margaine, 2015) by POs who, for the most part, had a full background in law (Razac et al, 2013). Would the changes put in place during the 2007–2019 era significantly change traditional French probation?…”

“…These POs are roughly in charge of 235,000 individuals (Direction de l’Administration Pénitentiaire, 2021). French POs are not specialists, but generalists, who are essentially recruited among lawyers (De Larminat, 2012; Razac et al, 2013) although some of them may display a preference for specific areas, such as prison settings or community work.…”