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DOI: 10.1177/0539018404045489

2004 43: 371Social Science InformationMarc Bessineducation

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 educationabandoning 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 fits 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

confirms 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, politicalcontext 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

polariteentre le temps long du droit et les contingences de son interpre tation et de la

realitesociale quil sagit de reguler. Le temps educatif de la justice des mineurs,

specifique, sinscrit dans la duree: les juges des enfants tablent sur un temps long,

pour accompagner les jeunes, un temps reversible et modulable, afin 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 & 2004SAGE Publications(London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New

Delhi), 0539-0184

DOI: 10.1177/0539018404045489 Vol 43(3), pp. 371387; 045489

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intervention en fonction de levolution familiale. Une enquete menee en France sur les

placements denfants decides en urgence permet de confirmer 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 contextesociopolitique oulaction 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 reflects 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 difficul-

ties. Our analysis of this discrepancy between urgency and the time

needed to educate juveniles, while avoiding speculation, makes useof 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 findings 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

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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, flexible 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 whatsome 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 flexibility, 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



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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 Francois 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 inflated production oflegal 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 fits 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 fit 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 diffi-

cult position by the importance of the decision to be made, for

example, a sentence of detention or placement may suddenly alter

a life.




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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 totime. 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 policiesbased on reparation. These policies, designed to compensate for

the wrongs done, are concerned primarily with the victim. The

figure 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 isessential 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 effi-

ciency. Unfortunately this efficiency 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 negativefeelings about the ineffectiveness of this system in handling cases.

For example, the police now very often have 24-hour telephone

access to the prosecutors office, 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).




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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 inflict 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

Kairosrefers to a more qualitative, pragmatic dimension of time,

since the problem is to proceed by comparison in order to interveneor 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 five 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 justicethat 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 specific connotation when it comes to juvenile justice.

This particularity stems from the juridical exception underlying

the educational principles that support the texts defining 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




8/18

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 (notification, investigation, judgement and probation),

whereas these powers are kept separate in the ordinary system of

justice. Besides cases involving delinquent minors (under the penalchapter 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 difficulties, 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 howthe 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.




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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 pathminors 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 difficulty, 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 someproximity 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

profile 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).




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The crisis of the educative doctrine

French society has changed dramatically since the mid-1970s. The

relation to the future has become less predictable; precariousnessand flexibility now characterize socio-economic statuses (Castel,

2003). The specific 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 erosionof 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 fire, 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 valueand 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 branchesof 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 influence 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




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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 whiletrying 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 crystallizesmajor 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

field 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 ofemergency 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 dichotomybetween 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




12/18

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 tothe 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 placementswere made by judges after declaring the case an emergency. This

extremely high figure is of concern to professionals working in this

field 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 findings of the study confirm 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 ofthese 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,




13/18

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 allowfor 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 first 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 field 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 flexibility 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. Thiskairosimplies 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-




14/18

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. Thistendency to open the umbrella makes it difficult 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 specific 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, illustratethe 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 find 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 find the ways

and means to adapt its interventions to this evolution.




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The institutionalization of emergency proceedings by the public

prosecutors office

The rise of legalism in the juvenile justice system reflects a changeof temporality. The purposeful time specific 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 office 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 office 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 flow 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 keepoperating, 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 difficulty opposing a prosecutors decisions.

Lastly, as this research shows, the juvenile justice system has

systematically institutionalized the emergency treatment of casesbased 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 significant 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




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emergency procedures for all professionals involved in educational

rehabilitation confirms 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 tocharacterize 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 upon 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 field

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 maintainingand 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

Scientific Research (CNRS). His work on juvenile justice, the military service

and medical care in prison has led him to give thought to socially defined 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 detenus et femmes soignantes: lintimite

des soins en prison, Ethnologie Francaise 32(1): 6881 (2002); M. Bessin (ed.)

Rites et seuils, passages et continuite s, a special issue ofAgora Debats/Jeunesses

28 (2002). Authors address: Centre dEtude des Mouvements Sociaux, Ecole des

Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, 54 boulevard Raspail, 75006 Paris. [email:

[email protected]]




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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 concernabout the social and cultural consequences of short-term policies.

2. For more on the distinction betweenkairos and chronos, see Bessin (1997). On

the right time, see Couloubaritsis (2000). On spatialized time, see Zarifian (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 toprovide 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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