Trois réflexions pour situer l’analyse psycho-criminologique française

Abstract

While the psycho-criminological serial approach is experimented within the French Prison Administration, it is worth presenting briefly this approach, its theories, models and practices, as well as its still non-existent position alongside the rehabilitative models “Risk-Need-Receptivity” (Bonta et Andrews, 2007) and “Good Lives Model” (Ward et Gannon, 2006). Our reflection is illustrated in three analyses : (i) the situation of French psycho-criminological analysis, (ii) the concretization of French psycho-criminological analysis via the serial bioscopic approach, and (iii) the link between the psycho-criminological analysis and the main international rehabilitative models. Firstly, the French psycho-criminological serial approach shifts the analysis focus to the study of situational dynamics rather than the study of the chronological and monographic life course (Villerbu et al., 2009 ; LeBas, 2011). Psycho-criminology (dynamical) here is a science of psychic situations and their development (Hirschelmann, 2013). The act would therefore not be an existential rupture, but a subjective marker of the subject's life. Secondly, French psycho-criminology finds a practical methodology in the serial bioscopic approach. The concept of “seriality” of psycho-criminalistic investigation (Ressler et al., 1986, Douglas et al., 1992) is rethought in a dynamic approach to criminal carriers and offense that lead us to question every repetition in the life course of the subject (Le Bas, 2011). From a methodological point of view and with retrospective and prospective analogies, it is necessary to analyze the various courses of the subject (family and conjugal, school and professional, health, judiciary, institutional, insertion and probation, and possibly his sexuality and his hobbies), which leads to repetitions, similarities, substitutions and cyclicities. While similarities with both De Greeff's (1956) trajectory analysis and Agnew's (1991, 2006) concept of “storyline” (or “event lines”) can be found, bioscopic-serial analysis combines the endogenous factors of the subject (emotional, sensory, cognitive, memorial) and environmental factors (situational, relational, social) from the subjective and interpretive positioning of the subject in action. Two axes organize the layout of information (Hirschelmann, 2016), the temporal dimension and the spatial dimension (e.g. family, work, Judiciary) of the subject's life course. The data analysis aims at linking and retracing, in what makes an event for the individual, the significant random events that have punctuated the life of the subject in order to induce him to work on his forces and vulnerabilities. Thirdly, although the French serial psycho-criminological approach shows an interest in the analysis of various offense-related fields (Hirschelmann, 2013), it is still difficult to grasp, because of the lack of concrete and generalizable tools. Above all, it does not seem to exist and question the main international rehabilitative models such as the “Risk-Needs-Receptivity” model (Bonta et Andrews, 2007) and the “Good Lives Model” (Ward et Gannon, 2006), both referring to the theories and practices of behavioral, cognitive and emotional therapies (Cottraux, 2011).