La politisation du thème de la criminalité aux Etats-Unis

Abstract

The United States appear to be a unique case in relation to repressive penal policies. It would be too much to enumerate all the penal and justice measures which would appear « exotic » (in a negative sense) to the European eye. The politicisation of criminalisation at the highest levels of the federal government appears to be a lucrative matter, driven by media power (since for the media crime has become a spectacle) and by interest groups. The apparent consensus of «public opinion», which is entirely repressive towards delinquents, needs, however, to be deconstructed and related to the history of its evolution and experimentation. This produces a more complex and contradictory picture. The closer one looks at policy on the ground locally, the more there seems to be resistance and counter- forces to the apparently dominant trend. In relation to futuristic scenarios which transform city ghettos into low level prisons or use them for criminal recapitalisation ends, democratic resistance and demands for social justice remain powerful opposing forces.