Social Science Information 2004 Bessin 371 87

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DOI: 10.1177/0539018404045489
2004 43: 371 Social Science Information
Marc Bessin
education
Emergency placements in juvenile justice: abandoning the time for
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Symposium: Anticipation. Between risk and uncertainty
Symposium: Lanticipation. Entre risque et incertitude
Marc Bessin
Emergency placements in juvenile justice: Emergency placements in juvenile justice:
abandoning the time for education abandoning the time for education
Abstract. The time-scales of justice are, on the one hand, the long time of the law
and, on the other hand, the time of the circumstances and contingencies that enter into
the interpretation of the law. The time for educational rehabilitation in the system of
juvenile justice ts into a long perspective, the time for professionals working in the
system to follow up on cases. For juvenile judges, this reversible, modulable time can be
used to adapt their interventions to the changing family environment. A survey in
three juvenile courts of the emergency placement of minors under the French Civil Code
conrms that the educative doctrine underlying this branch of justice is in the throes
of a crisis. There is a return to legalism among juvenile judges. In a social, political
context where taking immediate action is valued more than taking the time to monitor
and investigate cases, the anticipation of risks has led to an institutionalization of
emergency procedures with, as a consequence, the abandonment of the idea of a time
for educational rehabilitation.
Key words. Child welfare cases Emergency placement of minors Instantaneous
culture Juvenile justice Law Time
Resume. Larticle traite des temporalites judiciaires, qui sinscrivent dans une
polarite entre le temps long du droit et les contingences de son interpretation et de la
realite sociale quil sagit de re guler. Le temps e ducatif de la justice des mineurs,
specique, sinscrit dans la duree: les juges des enfants tablent sur un temps long,
pour accompagner les jeunes, un temps reversible et modulable, an dadapter leur
This article was presented at the symposium Anticipation: Between Risk and Uncertainty,
organized by Giovanni Gasparini (Catholic University, Milan) and Marc Bessin (CEMS
EHESS, Paris) at the Maison des Sciences de lHomme, Paris, 3031 January 2003.
Social Science Information & 2004 SAGE Publications (London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New
Delhi), 0539-0184
DOI: 10.1177/0539018404045489 Vol 43(3), pp. 371387; 045489
at Alexandru Ioan Cuza on June 29, 2014 ssi.sagepub.com Downloaded from
intervention en fonction de le volution familiale. Une enquete menee en France sur les
placements denfants decides en urgence permet de conrmer leffritement des conceptions
educatives de la justice des mineurs et le retour au legalisme des juges des enfants.
Pour anticiper les risques encourus par les mineurs en danger, dans un contexte
sociopolitique ou` laction dans le temps present est valorisee au detriment de la
temporisation, lauteur montre linstitutionnalisation des procedures durgence
judiciaire, qui enterine le renoncement au temps educatif.
Mots-cles. Culture de linstantane Droit Justice des mineurs Placement des
mineurs Protection de lenfance Temporalite
The time-scales involved in judicial practices are increasingly short,
dictated by urgency, which reects a change in societys conception
of time, preferring short spans and operating in a climate of
immediacy. Yet this acceleration runs counter to an educational
concept of juvenile justice, which banks on a long period of time
to help juveniles grow up within their family in spite of the difcul-
ties. Our analysis of this discrepancy between urgency and the time
needed to educate juveniles, while avoiding speculation, makes use
of a sociology of judicial practices that takes an external view of
the justice system.
The reduction of our sense of time raises major issues for the area
of the law. The now recurrent debate in France about insecurity and
juvenile justice questions the place of educational rehabilitation in
relation to sentencing. Most of these questions have to do with
time: the increasing demands put on the court system for a quick
response are typical of the time-related political and social issues
arising from judicial practice. The pressure on the judiciary to
respond rapidly is only one of the many signs of the instantaneous
culture characteristic of our relation to time. Indeed accelerating
proceedings alters the articulation of immediacy and the time
needed to make decisions. Owing to the educative principles that
guide its actions, juvenile justice in France is exemplary of this dia-
lectics. One good example is provided by the case in which a juvenile
judge foresees that a minor is in danger in his or her family whereas
the goal of educational rehabilitation is to maintain family ties. I will
present some of the ndings of a study conducted in several French
courts of cases involving the emergency placement of minors. The
study shows more generally how anticipating a situation tends to
foster the systematic adoption of emergency procedures.
372 Social Science Information Vol 43 no 3
Our instantaneous culture and the two time-scales of justice
The grip of the present
How do judges, using an ambivalent sense of emergency, introduce a
new relation to time into proceedings? We can understand this only
if we take into account some general trends in the organization of
various kinds of time: in politics (government by opinion polls),
economics (just-in-time manufacturing), employment (unstable,
precarious jobs, exible working hours), welfare (the crisis of the
insurance society), and so forth (Bessin and Gasparini, 2000).
The present now holds sway in many spheres of activity.
Based on real-time adaptability, this new organization of time is
diametrically opposed to an anticipation based on foresight and
planning characteristic of the industrial time culture. The relation
to the future has been reversed. Instead of a widespread belief in
progress that made it possible to bank on the future, uncertainty
now prevails for both individuals and society at large. Whereas
the welfare state was founded on actuarial risks socialized by insur-
ance (Castel, 2003), it has now been called into question by what
some call a risk society (Beck, 1992), with its individualization
of risks and social inequalities. More and more, action is conceived
in a short-term perspective. The sense of urgency that increasingly
governs the treatment of problems leads to demand of the present
what we used to expect from the future (Ladi, 2000), clearly illus-
trating a shift, characterized by exibility, in our cultural sense of
time (Bessin, 1997). This presentism, which breaks with the orga-
nization of time in the modern era, based on the notions of future,
progress and ideology (Hartog, 1995), tends to obliterate the longer
span of time needed for thought that is characteristic of research
and culture. The preference for programs with immediately visible
results keeps us from placing actions in a long-term perspective
and threatens to do away with a political culture of time altogether
(Chesneaux, 2000).
1
Immediacy and protraction are two ways of using time that over-
lap and complete each other. They entertain a dialectics in the
practice of many professions. In buying into this new right-now
culture, these professionals are obliged to more or less bear up
under the pressures of the demand for immediate responses, as we
will see in the following brief look at judicial practices and their
relation to time.
Bessin Anticipation 373
Immediacy and protraction
A judges relations with time oscillates between two poles, the long
time of the law and the time of its contingencies and interpretation.
The organization of judicial time spans the long term, since law is
associated with tradition and with the permanence and stability of
the rules it establishes and perpetuates. As Franc ois Ost (1999) has
emphasized, this long-term perspective is related to the ability of
the law to formulate social objectives, even though we live in an
instantaneous culture where the law is obliged to move faster and
faster, thereby becoming more random and transitory. Evidence of
this acceleration can be seen daily in the inated production of
legal texts, one rapidly supplanting the other, with the risk of under-
mining the stability of the law. However, this observation should not
make us forget the backlog of cases that threatens to block the
justice system. In this sense, acceleration and backlog are two
aspects of a single phenomenon, namely the organization of time
in the justice system (Ost, 2000).
The reputation of judges for their tendency to resist change is not
entirely unfounded, however. Jacques Commaille (1998) has sug-
gested a very convincing sociological explanation for their penchant
for protraction and the long term. Judges conception of the law as a
meta-guarantee ts in with their ideas about the distance and
more importantly the height they should maintain from the
social sphere. This conjures up the image of the sage who takes
the time to carefully pen his or her decisions. Among the judiciary,
there is thus a certain prestige connected with the act of writing, with
which is associated the value given to taking time.
This long-term pole, toward which the judiciary tends, is at odds
with a much shorter, more fragile time span connected with action or
decisions, sometimes urgent and subjected to reversibility. This is the
time dictated by social reality and its contingencies, the frame-
work used when interpreting the law. Judicial practice takes on its
meaning within this time frame, which, far from the stable time of
the law, must t into the reversible uncertain time of real life. This
is a time characterized by personal exposure and proximity, when
judges come under pressure from the outside (the prosecution,
public opinion, the defense, victims, etc.). They are placed in a dif-
cult position by the importance of the decision to be made, for
example, a sentence of detention or placement may suddenly alter
a life.
The ambiguities of presentism in penal cases
If we examine the acceleration of penal justice, we clearly see the
ambiguity of the values shown by the justice system with regard to
time. Whereas slowness is associated with a retributive conception
of sentencing (the long memory of the sentence as payment for the
crime), speed, urgency and immediacy tend to go with appeasement
of the victim. A sentence can be seen to have three functions (Roos,
1998): prevention (dissuasion with regard to the future), retribution
(payment for the past) and reparation (relief for the victims in the
present). Today, public opinion and the media tend to focus on
this third function, as is shown by the current spate of policies
based on reparation. These policies, designed to compensate for
the wrongs done, are concerned primarily with the victim. The
gure of the victim is becoming increasingly the focal point of penal
cases. The relation is one of immediacy, which brings to mind, for
instance, the immediacy of revenge. But justice needs to establish a
distance, to reckon with time as a duration. For this reason, the
presence of a third party and the time for investigation are indispen-
sable for the proper unfolding of a case. This additional time is
essential if justice is to be done.
The impact of the instantaneous, right-now culture in penal
cases can also be seen in the pursuit of speed in the name of ef-
ciency. Unfortunately this efciency often boils down to a concern
for visibility, with its attendant risk of showcase trials. For
instance, the so-called real-time treatment of penal procedures
in France (Dray, 1999) is being generalized in reaction both to recur-
rent criticism of the slow pace of justice and to the publics negative
feelings about the ineffectiveness of this system in handling cases.
For example, the police now very often have 24-hour telephone
access to the prosecutors ofce, and the person on duty decides,
following the conversation, whether or not to pursue the case. The
judiciary has objected to this real-time treatment. Besides emphasiz-
ing certain types of offenses while overlooking white-collar crimes,
for example, this handling of penal proceedings is also criticized
for its focus on the effects rather than the underlying causes of delin-
quency (Ministe` re de la Justice, 2000).
Kairos: the ideal time-scale for judges
Confronted with time pressures, judges often refer to the idea of a
reasonable length of time, to show both their reluctance to inter-
vene right away and their discomfort at the overly long delays they
sometimes inict on parties. A reasonable length of time refers to the
idea of a right time or opportunity (kairos). This notion of time
is better suited to action, in contrast to the spatialized, linear,
chronological conception of time (chronos) to which the time-
conscious industrial culture has accustomed us.
2
Kairos refers to a more qualitative, pragmatic dimension of time,
since the problem is to proceed by comparison in order to intervene
or to act at the right moment (Bessin, 1998). If the opportunity has
been seized or the timely moment has been chosen, it is because, con-
sciously or unconsciously, distinctions have been made, possibilities
sorted and priorities set. This time-scale seems best suited to judicial
practice, since decisions of justice should ideally integrate elements
capable of shaping the development of the person before the court.
A judge does not pronounce a sentence without modulating it
with criteria based, for example, on the offenders personality.
Such modulation lies at the very heart of judicial practice.
3
Judges
explain this need for modulation by the seriousness of the decisions
they sometimes have to make in comparison with the time they have
to make them for instance, a decision made in ve minutes to
incarcerate someone is irremediable, since the sentencing is an
irreversible experience. This is reminiscent of a certain court tradi-
tion revolving around the ceremony of rendering justice which
expresses its permanence. Whereas lawmakers may prefer a justice
that makes irreversible decisions, judges, who apply the law, prefer
the principle of modulation. Judges prefer kairos, but chronos
brings them back to reality.
The undermining of educational rehabilitation in juvenile justice
This overview of the time-scales practiced by the French judiciary
has a more specic connotation when it comes to juvenile justice.
This particularity stems from the juridical exception underlying
the educational principles that support the texts dening practice
in juvenile courts. These judges are in a peculiar position vis-a` -vis
the law and juridical practice, and their relation to time therefore
condenses a number of issues bound up with their professional
identity.
Anticipation in the French educative doctrine: a long, modulable
time-span
In France, the ordinance of 1945, which instituted the principle of
educational rehabilitation for persons under the age of 18, provides
the legal framework for the juvenile justice system. Under this so-
called educative doctrine, juvenile judges may condemn a minor
only in exceptional circumstances. The basic rule is to order educa-
tional measures for rehabilitation. To best adapt this rule to each
case, the minors personality is examined, which puts an end to
any ideas about an immediate appearance in court.
4
All proceedings take place under the authority of a juvenile judge,
the pivot in this institution. The juvenile judge concentrates all
powers (notication, investigation, judgement and probation),
whereas these powers are kept separate in the ordinary system of
justice. Besides cases involving delinquent minors (under the penal
chapter of the 1945 ordinance), the juvenile judge has the task of
protecting children who are abused or in danger (articles 375ff. of
the Civil Code). This so-called educational assistance is intended
to alleviate the familys difculties, since judges have to try to main-
tain family ties while protecting children. If the minor is in need of
protection, the judge can place, for a shorter or longer time, him
or her in the custody of an establishment or a foster family. But at
any time a judge may reconsider such measures depending on how
the minor and his or her family have changed. Judges actions are
based on a long time-scale that envisions a positive evolution of
minors and their social re-integration. In this sense, the reversibility
of judges decisions is based on a future-oriented conception of time.
Under this educative doctrine, juvenile judges were a sort of
doctor of souls. As the minor was still growing up, the educative
philosophy in the 1945 ordinance led to placing more importance on
the juveniles prior personality than on the offenses of which he or
she was accused, in view of protecting and educating the minor.
During the 30 glorious years of growth following World War
Two, the socio-economic conditions of a wage-earning society
were thought to be capable of providing possibilities for socially
integrating such minors.
The notion of the childs interest supposes a perfectible age
of life and implies a long educational rehabilitation based on a
diagnosis made by a group of professionals (psychologists, social
workers, etc.), who become the judges indispensable partners.
A minors objective behavior the facts of which he or she is accused
are but symptoms of maladjustment, of a pathology or even of an
environment from which he or she has to be protected. The minors
legal incompetence means that penal and civil law overlap here. The
distinction between the two is not to be made since the educative
doctrine entails considering delinquent youth to be, above all,
minors in danger. Under this doctrine, juvenile justice uses its
powers of law enforcement in order to place on the right path
minors who have strayed from a relatively planned itinerary, with
its schools and other institutions for socializing young people.
This exceptional jurisdiction, with its notion of custody, prevailed,
not without difculty, in the post-Second World War setting of
progress, economic growth and full employment, where youth was
synonymous with hope. Juvenile justice acquired legitimacy owing
to the strong involvement of judges who accepted to act as
super social workers. Because they accepted to work in some
proximity with the accused, in a way that had more to do with
social work than with judging, based on the diagnoses of social
services, the juvenile judges came to embody a model of the exercise
of justice as an operator of the social sphere (Commaille, 1991), an
alternative to the prevailing juridical model.
As a consequence, this profession was relatively depreciated
within the judiciary. Career opportunities for juvenile judges were
extremely limited. This is a key point in the sociology of this occu-
pational group. This profession has to be exercised for a long time,
and this leads to some degree of specialization. However, career
organization in the judiciary tends to favor spending a short time
as a juvenile judge in order to obtain a promotion. For this
reason, we might sometimes use the word vocation for a certain
prole of judge who has relinquished career prospects to sit in a
juvenile court. Nevertheless, many juvenile judges have accepted
their marginal position in the judiciary (The law on minors is a
minor law!) and settled into it as into a vocation, in the name of
the principles of the educative doctrine. This was the form of acti-
vism, closer in a way to the social than to the judicial sphere, that
characterized juvenile judges especially during this institutions
golden age (195070).
The crisis of the educative doctrine
French society has changed dramatically since the mid-1970s. The
relation to the future has become less predictable; precariousness
and exibility now characterize socio-economic statuses (Castel,
2003). The specic characteristics of juvenile justice are less well
understood in a situation of rising delinquency. Critics accuse this
system of being soft. The principle of educational rehabilitation
is no longer taken for granted. Juvenile delinquents are to be held
responsible, and the juxtaposition of penal and civil law characteris-
tic of this exceptional jurisdiction is lambasted.
Given this increasing concern about delinquency and the erosion
of role models, juvenile judges and their auxiliaries (social workers,
etc.) are having an ever harder time adhering to the rehabilitative,
therapeutic doctrine. In this setting, the situation in juvenile justice
is being reversed. The educative doctrine has come under re, and
we are witnessing a return to legalism. Juvenile judges increasingly
tend to assume the penalizing function inherent in justice, with its
implication of punishment. This repenalization of juvenile justice
(van de Kerchove, 1990) leads to taking the offense at its face value
and holding minors responsible for their acts. It also leads to making
a clear-cut distinction between delinquents and minors in danger.
This return to legalism and retreat from the principles of educa-
tional rehabilitation can also be detected in sociological trends
affecting the place of the profession of juvenile judge within the
judiciary. Many of these judges have abandoned the social involve-
ment typical of their predecessors, and most of them now want to
reduce the distance separating juvenile justice from other branches
of the judiciary. The specialization and commitment of judges
motivated by the educative doctrine are vanishing. Seeking a place
in the judiciary and in law, these judges are trying to erase this pro-
fessions previous image of social activism. Nevertheless, although
the juvenile judges whom we might call the guardians of the
temple of education no longer form a majority in this profession,
they still enjoy legitimacy and inuence enough to play a leading
role in arguing against the acceleration of juvenile proceedings.
Juvenile judges and emergency placements
It was in this setting of a crisis of the educative model that I
conducted my research on the acceleration of proceedings in juvenile
justice. These judges have to defend the principles of educational
rehabilitation that characterize juvenile justice even though these
principles differentiate their practices from ordinary law while
trying to defend their position in the judiciary, even if this means
backing down from the aforementioned principles. As pointed
out, this distortion can be detected in the current tendency to require
juvenile justice to provide a fast response to cases brought to court
and make decisions in a very short time. The predominant tendency
is to take tougher measures instead of educational ones.
Given their special position in relation to the law and judicial
practices, juvenile judges have a relation to time that crystallizes
major issues related to their professional identity. By approaching
this question from the angle of civil law for protecting minors in
danger (articles 375ff. of the Civil Code), I could test the hypothesis
about a generalization of decisions made in an emergency. In this
eld of educative assistance under the Civil Code, taking time
for decisions and interventions has not yet drawn much criticism,
unlike in cases under the Penal Code.
Emergency placements are ambivalent because the notion of
emergency refers both to the situation to be handled very quickly
and to the response to it. This (con)fusion between question and
response is typical of emergency cases. Professionals in juvenile
justice try to rationalize it by differentiating legitimate situations
of a real emergency from less urgent, fake emergencies, a dis-
tinction also made in treating emergencies in hospitals (Bessin,
1995). Sociological observation of how emergency cases are con-
structed in court forces us to stand back from this dichotomy
between real and fake emergencies and, instead, try to see how
persons in the juvenile justice system put it to use.
My research focused on the emergency placement of minors by
juvenile judges in three courts, two in the provinces and one in the
Paris suburbs. These placements were responses to serious situations
(abuse, psychiatric disorders, etc.) that called for solutions other
than maintaining family bonds and led to placing the child or
adolescent in an institution or foster family. The educative aspect
of these cases consists in anticipating such situations and preparing
the whole family for the placement. This exceptional procedure that
departs from the law provides for circumventing the contradictory
principle once the judge issues an order classifying a case as an
emergency (urgence judiciaire). For example, a hearing with the
family can thus be avoided prior to the placement decision.
For this research, I examined 1 in 30 of all court orders for placing
minors issued by three juvenile courts from the start of 1996 up to
the end of 2000. Using records from proceedings, I described the
situations treated as well as the families social backgrounds. Inter-
views were also conducted with professionals involved in placement
proceedings (juvenile judges, deputy public prosecutors, child wel-
fare caseworkers, etc.).
The results of the study show that treating cases as an emergency
has been institutionalized as a way that juvenile judges adapt to
their working conditions: 45 percent of the orders for placements
were made by judges after declaring the case an emergency. This
extremely high gure is of concern to professionals working in this
eld because such placements were not prepared. In their opinion,
this lack of anticipation signals that social services have failed to
play their part in educational rehabilitation. Furthermore, 75 per-
cent of these placement orders did not contain any explanation of
the emergency, and fewer than 19 percent of them clearly mentioned
the reasons for resorting to this exceptional procedure.
Following up on cases, an impossibility
The ndings of the study conrm a well-known pattern of place-
ment. Placements were made to remove minors from disunited,
large families deeply affected by job insecurity and, in particular,
from single-parent households headed by the mother. Most of
these placements punctuated a judicial process already under way,
such as a court order in favor of educative assistance within the
family. In such cases, the court had already ordered supervision,
or monitoring, of the family by social workers, or an investigation
was being carried out on conditions in the family. This supervision
by child welfare services was anticipatory in that a placement
order is less often decided in an emergency in such cases. The over-
representation of single-child families is evidence that the more a
family is known by child welfare services, the less likely it is to be
affected by an emergency placement. Caseworkers said they inter-
vened in these families in the hope of keeping the children there.
If maintaining the familys custody over a minor was impossible,
these social workers had the assignment of preparing family mem-
bers and the minor for an out-of-home placement. For these families
already under supervision, emergency placements represented a
failure.
How are we to understand this recourse to emergency procedures
in the case of families already under supervision by welfare services?
By examining the context, light was shed on the circumstances under
which this work was unexpectedly interrupted, usually by an emer-
gency placement. In principle, the family is monitored in order to
modulate decisions as a function of changes in it or in the child.
Although the time for rehabilitation is long, reversible and modul-
able, current working conditions in child welfare no longer allow
for this time-scale. Caseworkers are supposed to meet regularly
with the parents and the minor, and to monitor conditions in the
family environment. When such meetings do occur, they are, accord-
ing to caseworkers, too far apart. Given the work overload, the time
between a court order for supervision and the rst meeting with a
caseworker is often longer than the legal delay of six months. If
the situation in the family worsens between two meetings, a place-
ment may have to be made in an emergency. The problem in follow-
ing up on minors and their families is to intervene at the right
moment, but working conditions do not allow for this. Though
they are legally responsible for overseeing this monitoring, juvenile
judges hold back from involvement in eld work. For this reason,
their decisions about cases are experienced as being rigid and too
widely spaced, hence not well adapted to rapidly changing family
environments. The absence of exibility between a placement and
the means at the disposal of caseworkers often comes under criti-
cism. As caseworkers strongly insisted, anticipating and preparing
a placement call for thought about the right moment for an interven-
tion, about the opportunity conducive to a bonding between a foster
family and the minor. This kairos implies continuously following up
on decisions with the possibility of modulating interventions. The
fact that this principle has come under question in actual practice
accounts for many emergency placements in the case of families
under supervision.
When examining the particulars in out-of-home placement cases,
we notice that professionals tend to open the umbrella so as to
cover themselves by prematurely anticipating events and thus
avoid incurring responsibility (for example, for not reporting mis-
treatment), even at the risk of making false allegations. Juvenile
judges criticize this quite narrow interpretation of the precautionary
principle. They feel that schools, for instance, too often try to cover
themselves by systematically reporting minors in danger. This
tendency to open the umbrella makes it difcult for various pro-
fessionals to cooperate on cases. Juvenile judges have to deal with
partners who shirk their responsibilities. They try to maintain a dis-
tance from social workers and other professionals who might report
minors in danger. As judicial practices are now becoming more
legalistic, the compartmentalization between professions is growing.
One profession makes reports, the other decides whether any heed
should be paid to them. Lacking a common ground for their inter-
ventions and for avoiding misunderstandings, these judges are
forced to search for other relations they can trust, which leads them
to personalize professional relationships (Mouhanna, 2001).
By examining the causes cited by judges to explain emergency
placements, I formed an idea of a few specic situations where
such decisions were made. Violence, especially sexual violence, and
childbirth were events that triggered an acceleration of placement
measures. These situations, apparently beyond discussion, illustrate
the link between an emergency as a form of action and the feel-
ings that justify recourse to emergency measures (Ladi, 2000).
However
the question of the speed of the intervention is not to be confused with that of its
duration; and a faster intervention is not incompatible with the passage of time
between the moment when justice enters into action and when the judge makes a
decision. (Cartuyvels, 2000: 638)
In fact, caseworkers emphasized the rigidity and inertia resulting
from court decisions. For example, a minor might run away from
the establishment where he or she has been placed, or the parents
or even the minor might ask a judge to nd a solution to their differ-
ences. The urgency of such cases interrupts the measures previously
decided by the court, whether to place the minor outside the home or
to keep him or her in the family. Such cases show how much the
family environment can evolve over time, often in a positive sense
but sometimes for the worse. Juvenile justice has to nd the ways
and means to adapt its interventions to this evolution.
The institutionalization of emergency proceedings by the public
prosecutors ofce
The rise of legalism in the juvenile justice system reects a change
of temporality. The purposeful time specic to the philosophy of
educational rehabilitation has yielded to emergency interventions:
Dominated by the concern about managing the risks of deviancy
among youth, policies of aid and prevention now show a preference
for a management of time that gives more than its due to proximity
and favors the present alone (Cartuyvels, 2000: 635).
5
The prose-
cutors ofce has thus come to play an important role in orienting
cases involving minors. In emergency cases, deputy public prose-
cutors act as judges, but they envision this role quantitatively. The
activity of the prosecutors ofce refers to chronos, a time measured
with numbers, instead of the idea of a just measure, kairos. The
aim is to set in operation the machinery of justice by making deci-
sions so as to avoid congestion, to keep the ow going by evaluating
crises but to the detriment of the family processes that underlie the
rehabilitation announced in legal texts on juvenile justice. Focused
on the present, prosecutors see to it that judicial institutions keep
operating, even if this means overlooking the spirit of the law in
juvenile justice, with its sense of a long, reversible period of time.
The educative doctrine, which judges on the bench have done
much to compromise, also seems compromised by the actions of
omnipresent public prosecutors. In fact, juvenile judges have enor-
mous difculty opposing a prosecutors decisions.
Lastly, as this research shows, the juvenile justice system has
systematically institutionalized the emergency treatment of cases
based on the prosecutors decisions. Juvenile judges no longer play
the key role, especially not in cases concerning families whom social
services were not already supervising. But this consistent handling
of cases as emergencies is being achieved to the detriment of the
juridical coherence of juvenile justice. True, a signicant proportion
of emergency placements make up for institutional shortcomings
(such as a lack of places in juvenile centers) or malfunctions (for
example, many emergencies are reported on Friday evening in
anticipation of slack services over the weekend). Handling a case
as an emergency might also be an administrative procedure that
legalizes a placement when, for example, it has not been possible
to hear the family. But the tendency to develop and institutionalize
emergency procedures for all professionals involved in educational
rehabilitation conrms a major shift of perspective. Not all juvenile
judges and caseworkers, however, seem resigned to abdicating and
abandoning kairos, the sense of the right moment that used to
characterize interventions for protecting children in danger. But to
avoid abdicating, they must innovate so as to withstand the time
pressures bearing down on educational rehabilitation.
Emergencies in juvenile justice are one sign among others of a
return to legalism and a disavowal of the principles of educational
rehabilitation that used to characterize this specialized jurisdiction.
In this system of surveillance and prevention, judges used to antici-
pate dangerous situations by actually monitoring and following up
on cases and by becoming involved, an involvement they are no
longer able to maintain. Lessons could be drawn from this example
about how anticipation in various professional practices tends to be
institutionalized via emergency procedures. To stick to the eld
of law, the most troubling sign of this change of temporality is
undoubtedly that the law is increasingly unable to assume one of
its fundamental functions, namely to institute society (Ost, 1999).
For juvenile justice, this function used to consist in maintaining
and consolidating family ties, protecting children in danger and pre-
venting deviant behavior. The results of such actions are not easy to
quantify and measure in the present. Our instantaneous culture,
with its emergency procedures and proximity-based arrangements,
is calling into question these actions that require a long-term
perspective.
Translated by Noal Mellott (CNRS, Paris)
Marc Bessin (born in 1965) is a sociologist at the French National Center of
Scientic Research (CNRS). His work on juvenile justice, the military service
and medical care in prison has led him to give thought to socially dened periods
of time, the ages of life and the life-course. His research currently focuses on family
calendars in the case of late parenthood. Among his most recent publications are:
M. Bessin (ed.) Autopsie du service militaire (19652001), Paris: Autrement (2002);
M. Bessin and M.H. Lechien Hommes de tenus et femmes soignantes: lintimite
des soins en prison, Ethnologie Franc aise 32(1): 6881 (2002); M. Bessin (ed.)
Rites et seuils, passages et continuite s, a special issue of Agora Debats/Jeunesses
28 (2002). Authors address: Centre dEtude des Mouvements Sociaux, Ecole des
Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, 54 boulevard Raspail, 75006 Paris. [email:
bessin@ehess.fr]
Notes
1. The massive petition campaign in France in the spring of 2004 against the war
on intelligence, launched by the journal Les Inrockuptibles, illustrates this concern
about the social and cultural consequences of short-term policies.
2. For more on the distinction between kairos and chronos, see Bessin (1997). On
the right time, see Couloubaritsis (2000). On spatialized time, see Zarian (2001).
3. For this reason, the French judiciary felt that the recent proposal made by the
Minister of the Interior to institute minimum sentences (i.e. systematic sentences for
certain offenses without taking into account the circumstances or the delinquents
personality) amounted to a denial of the function of judging.
4. This principle entailing a minimum time for examining the minors problems
is often the target of ideological attacks that stigmatize the educative objectives of
juvenile justice by pointing to the impunity of young delinquents. The proposal to
provide for immediate court appearances of minors regularly crops up in debates.
5. In our new instantaneous culture, proximity is to space what emergency is to
time.
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