French Criminal Justice

Primed by the author's string of publications on French criminal process (e.g. Hodgson 2001; 2002a; 2002b), I anticipated that this book would present an empirical research report on criminal investigations and prosecutions in France. In fact French Criminal Justice is a great deal more, but also somewhat less, than I was expecting. To be sure, empirical data remain at the heart of the exposition. However, this material is here reworked into a comprehensive account of French criminal prosecutions, with a strong comparative dimension complementing the predominantly socio-legal orientation of the author's previously published work. Before arriving at the empirical core of the study, there is extensive groundwork to be laid. In the first two chapters, Hodgson takes time to situate her research in terms of its theoretical preoccupations, methodological commitments and legal policy context. French Criminal Justice aspires to transcend the somewhat hackneyed juxtaposition of ‘adversarial’ and ‘inquisitorial’ procedural systems, which is frequently encountered in comparative scholarship, whilst simultaneously emphasizing the crucial importance of supplementing formal accounts of ‘law in the books’ with studies of the empirical realities of the ‘law in action’. Recent developments in French criminal justice policy and practice afford promising material for comparative case studies, not least because criminal justice reform in France became highly politicized during the last two decades. Swings in the fortunes of national governments have been reflected in successive waves of legislative proposals rapidly followed by policy U-turns, as each in-coming administration seeks to undo the latest ‘meddling’ of its immediate predecessors in the ministries of justice, the interior and defence. The story is further complicated by historically entrenched institutional arrangements which, for example, split French policing into the police nationale (part of the Ministry of the Interior) and the Gendarmerie (within the Ministry of Defence). In these introductory chapters, Hodgson patiently describes the broader political context and institutional structures of French criminal proceedings, albeit at some cost of repetition later in the exposition, and without systematically tracing shifts in law and policy through her empirical data.

Adversarial system · Context (archaeology) · Criminal justice · Criminal law · Economic Justice · Law and economics · Law reform · Political science · Scholarship · Sociology · Education, sociology, and vocational training · Healthcare Systems and Practices · History · Law · Legal Systems and Institutions

• Pardons and Amnesties as Policy Instruments in Contemporary France

  René Lévy•Crime and Justice•2007

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