La science pénitentiaire comme science de gouvernement

Abstract

The emergence of scientific knowledge at the end of the XIXth century accompanies the political decision and asserts the fragile balance of the Republican state. In the penal field, “La Société Générale des prisons” (General Society of Prisons) (1877) following the Royal Society of prisons (1819), gets interested by the prison, and by the penal reform which was strongly bound(connected) to the social question. Based on its journal, on the international conferences, the dynamism of her active socially reforming members, the SGP builds an expert knowledge, the penology. In this paper, we shall focus on to the reforming origins of a prison science, to the vectors which have built and conveyed this expert knowledge, as well as to its practices and to their impacts. The penal science will be particularly fruitful in producing a strong penal and criminal policy, and will become a knowledge which builds politics, a science of government.

Keywords

• France
• nineteenth century
• social reform
• penal science
• penology
• science of government