Community Corrections in France

In France, state probation works with networks of associative partners made up of professionals, not volunteers, with consequently very different professional cultures. State probation merged with the prison services in 1999, which has gradually led to a "penitentiarization" of its professional culture. This has also led to penitentiary gigantism and omnipotence, which is reinforced by the fact that the prison services are in charge of drafting laws that are hardly amended in parliament, as well as directly enacting decrees and circulars. To put it simply: the prison services make the laws and produce them in a way that serves their interests. In recent years, their main objective has been to reduce prison overcrowding by relying on alternative sentences and measures; this has failed, as the prison population continues to grow. Over a few decades, the professional culture of probation officers has changed from social workers (Perrier, 2012) and "assist and advise" to that of legal clerks (de Larminat, 2012) and, more recently, to that of proto-criminologists (Dindo, 2020). Another significant feature of recent years has been the gradual destruction of reentry and supervision judges (in essence problem-solving courts) by reforms written by the prison services, whose aim is to have full control over the implementation of sentences and probation. With the progressive marginalization of these judges, due process has also been sidelined. In its place, bureaucratic and managerial management has replaced the previous alliance between due process, individualization, and rehabilitation. At the same time, the last twenty years have seen a considerable increase in the power of prosecutors, who are now in charge of most felony cases and who allocate them to alternative management procedures. This has also contributed to the marginalization of due process. On a more positive note, some prosecutors use their power to create quasi-problem-solving programs.