Irresponsabilité et responsabilité pénales : faut-il réformer l’article 122-1 du Code pénal français ?

Abstract

Determining whether perpetrators of offences have penal responsibility or not with regard to a penal offence is one of the most significant pre-sentencing issues. Article 122-1 of the French penal code – in force since 1st March 1994 – is the deciding factor in this issue. In order to better take into account the mental diversity and the situations of perpetrators that commit notably criminal offences, the text could be reformed in these three ways: by taking into account the potential plurality of psychic and/or neuropsychic disorder(s) at the moment when the act is committed; by removing the blurred concepts of “abolition” or “alteration of discernment” and “abolition of” or “obstruction to control of their acts”, sources of diverging interpretations and concepts and not necessarily relevant to every single person affected by psychic and/or neuropsychic disorder(s) when the act is committed, which could warrant a verdict of penal irresponsibility or a reduction in their sentence; by refocusing the text of the two paragraphs that deal with the subject of the exclusive or non-exclusive causality which can exist between potential psychic and/or neuropsychic disorder(s) and the committal of penal offences. If this proposal to reform article 122-1 of the French penal code were to be accepted, it could improve the validity of any responses to issues that bear upon a perpetrator's penal responsibility or absence thereof with regard to their mental state at the moment when they commit the act that they are charged with.