History of the French Judicial System : from the mid-18th Century to present
Résumé
Briefly reviewing the history of the French Judicial System from the mid-18th Century to present could involve many simplifications. The temptation is strong to emphasize one erosion, a softening of punishment, in a progress of civilization, along the gradual conquest of the monopoly of legitimate physical violence by the state. It could be easy to oppose the cruel tortures inflicted on the fourteenth-fifteenth century (cropping of ears of thieves, etc..) from the contemporary alternative sentence to prison. But reducing the severity of sentences, changing their purposes- from punishment of the amendment, are not linear process. It's always important to compare the theories and criminal law practice : On this plan the terms of the execution of sentences are especially important because they will escape largely to judge, especially when prison sentences becomes the rule after the Revolution. Moreover, the notion of severity, closely linked to changing sensibilities, seems irrelevant when it's applied on a too “long duration” (F. Braudel). It seems more interesting to focus primarily in the context of France, to outline the history of various penalties, application form that the judges (the choice of sentences), their performance also see how the functions displayed on the criminal prosecution are not always those that are asserted in the speech. Broadly speaking, we can consider that the late Middle Ages to that of the Ancien Regime dominates the time of torture, in order to punish the culprit (guilty and charged). After the reform of Revolution, the nineteenth century appears as the time of Prisons and the exclusion, even elimination : the preservation of social and political order and political outweighs the reformation of convicts. This reformation appears along the individualization of punishment which is its corollary, in the late nineteenth century, but is not really news, but it is resolved, when the prison is becoming called into question after the Second World War.