The UIDP/AIDP: 125 years serving Criminal Justice, Human Rights and Humanity

Abstract

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The long history of prevention: Social Defence, security and anticipating future crimes in the era of ‘penal welfarism’

“…The prospect of being able to identify criminological conditions, and types, fundamentally revolutionized criminology and led to the establishment of international penal reform movements such as the Union Internationale de Droit Pénal (UIDP), in 1899, by the three figures who continued to develop Social Defence philosophy: Adolphe Prins, Gerhardus Van Hamel and Antonius Von Liszt (Vervaele, 2015). The UIDP brought together leading advocates of penal reform from politics, prison inspection and academia.…”

“…The UIDP brought together leading advocates of penal reform from politics, prison inspection and academia. Between 1889 and 1914 the UIDP held 14 international conferences in different countries-covering the study of crime, causes of crime, tools to prevent and repress crime, and reforms which would benefit criminal justice systems (Vervaele, 2015). Centrally, they proposed the need for criminal justice systems based around the defence of society from (future) crime-rather than the classical doctrine of retributive punishment of offenders.…”

“…These began in 1955 with 51 governments in attendance from around the globe, but rapidly extended to 1200 participants from 85 countries by the time of the 1965 Congress in Stockholm (Joyce, 1967) and 130 national delegations by the 1985 Congress in Milan (Wright, 1985). The United Nations also sponsored ‘Social Defence observers’ across member states to facilitate and promote research activities into the causes of crime and its prevention (Walters, 2001: 212).…”

“…Effectively, the United Nations opened a field for international criminological knowledge around Social Defence programmes as necessary crime prevention measures which extended beyond juridical sentencing, into the realm of preventive social policy (Lopez-Rey, 1957). Walters (2001) highlights the context of post-war reconstruction (and progressive politics) as central to the appropriation of the Social Defence cipher by the UN. To pursue social stability and fiscal stability in the aftermath of a devastating World War, the European states collectively engaged to combat the internal enemy—crime.…”

“…Furthermore, the embedding of the 'new' Social Defence within some International Organisations has largely escaped the attention of Criminology -which tends to study criminal justice at the national and sub-national levels. Of course, there are notable exceptions which have explored the impact of Social Defence criminology on the rendering of the 'dangerous offender' in criminal justice, the mutation of preventive detention across history, and -less commonly -the role of Social Defence in the United Nations' Crime Prevention activities (Danet 2008;Lopez-Rey 1957;Pifferi 2016;Tulkens & Digneffe 1981;Vervaele 2015;Walters 2001;Wyvekens 2011), to which this paper will contribute. This paper highlights how the Social Defence movement upturned classical understandings of punishment as a retributive act and reframed juridical apparatuses to serve an explicit preventive security mandate.…”