Marc Ancel - Social Defence

The International Library of Sociology

SOCIAL DEFENCE

Founded by KARL MANNHEIM

The International Library of Sociology

THE SOCIOLOGY OF LAW AND CRIMINOLOGY
In 15 Volumes

A Modern Approach to Criminal Problems

by
Marc Ancel
With a Foreword by
Leon Radzinowicz
Translated by
J. Wilson

First published in 1965 by

Routledge

Reprinted in 1998 by
Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN

Transferred to Digital Printing 2007

1965 Marc Ancel 1965 Translation, J. Wilson and Marc Ancel

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A CIP catalogue record for this book
is available from the British Library

Social Defence

ISBN 0-415-17745-6

The Sociology of Law and Criminology: 15 Volumes

ISBN 0-415-17832-0

The International Library of Sociology: 274 Volumes

ISBN 0-415-17838-X

Publisher's Note

The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quality of this reprint but points out that some imperfections in the original may be apparent

by LEON RADZINOWICZ
Wolfson Professor of Criminology, University of Cambridge

MONSIEUR MARC ANCEL is perhaps unique in criminological circles. He combines a scientific and academic career with the duties of a Judge of the Supreme Court of France. He is editor in chief of the influential Revue de Science Criminelle , an inspiring force in the Institute of Comparative Law of the University of Paris, as well as a lecturer in the Criminological Institute, and rapporteur on a wide range of penal problems at many international gatherings.

The idea of a school of criminal law and criminology in the continental sense is alien to the lawyer in this country. But it is the first thing an Englishman interested in such matters encounters when he mixes with his European colleagues. 'England', remarked Sir Evelyn Ruggles-Brise, 'has not participated to any great extent in these controversies of the criminological schools, which have been so active and have excited so much interest on the Continent of Europe.... It may almost be said there is no school of criminology in England.'

Of such a school Monsieur Ancel is a member: he is indeed the leading exponent of the movement of 'social defence'. The very designation may -well be puzzling to English readers and it is therefore particularly fortunate that we should have from him so eloquent, persuasive and vigorous a statement of his position.

The English may still feel that the continentals are too much under the spell of doctrinaire solutions and that what really matters most is the cumulative advance in practical improvements, cautiously pioneered over the years on an empirical basis. The continentals, on their side, may suggest that the English give too little thought to principles, and that they would have gone farther, and produced a more coherent system, if they had known beforehand where they were going. Such differences of emphasis add to the fascination of a book like this.

I regard it as a privilege to introduce it to English-speaking readers.

LEON RADZINOWICZ

Institute of Criminology,
Cambridge,
June 1965.

THE ORIGINAL EDITION of this book was published in Paris in 1954; a Spanish edition was published in Buenos Aires in 1961, with the title: La nueva defensa social ( un movimiento de politica criminal humanista ), with a foreword by Professor Aftalion; and a Serbo-Croat edition in Belgrade in 1962, Nova drustvena odbrana. Pokret humanisticke kriminalne politike, with a foreword by Professor Srzentic. A second French edition was needed several years ago, but it was thought better to wait until the results of certain experiments carried out in various countries and international conferences should have shed new light on the problem, before publication. It is now possible to proceed with the revision of the 1954 edition, and this English edition is based on the second French edition, now in preparation.

It gives us great satisfaction to see this work made available to English-speaking criminalists and criminologists. We are therefore particularly indebted to all those who have helped to make the doctrines of Social Defence known in England. First our thanks are due to Mr John A. Mack, Director of the School of Social Study, University of Glasgow, who in April 1962 included a conference on Social Defence in the Residential Course in Criminological Studies, which he organized. We would like to thank also Professor Goodhart for accepting the text of this conference for publication in the law Quarterly Review, October 1962. Our special thanks are due to Professor Radzinowicz, who was the real promoter of the English edition of this book, and who has thereby shown the ties which bring together Social Defence and Criminology. Our grateful thanks are owed too to Mr John Wilson, who has borne the heavy burden of translating the French text, to Miss Yvonne Marx, Assistant Director of the Service de recherches juridiques comparatives of the French Centre national de la recherche scientifique, who has kindly contributed to the text, and to Miss Denyse Chast, Assistant at the Centre franais de droit compar , who has helped in revising the manuscript. Finally, I thank Mr David Evans too for his help towards the publication in England of our book.

MARC ANCEL

THERE IS PROBABLY no need, today, to justify at any length the publication of a book on social defence. Few concepts are more frequently invoked: indeed the first difficulty that arises is probably the result of the innumerable ways in which the concept is used, with varied and sometimes contradictory meanings. It might almost be said that this expression is, to some extent, a fashionable one, so that some people do not always withstand the temptation to use it, on occasion, rather casually. However, I would strongly emphasize my conviction that when all is said and done the frequency and variety with which the term 'social defence' is employed corresponds to one of the realities of our age, and that it thus serves as a vehicle or means of expression for concepts whose dynamism is henceforth undeniable.

Moreover, the reality and the strength of the social defence movement today can no longer be gainsaid. The following chapters will provide an opportunity for discovering and evaluating the scope of the movement. But I am not unaware that the very term 'social defence' often appears strange and is also frequently misunderstood, especially by lawyers brought up in the Common Law tradition or by the criminologists of the English-speaking world. Although the term is more and more widely used, especially in America, and in spite of its adoption by the United Nations in 1948, it has not yet been completely absorbed into the terminology of Anglo-American criminological studies. As will shortly become apparent, the term involves a reference to the notion of 'penal policy', another expression which does not form part of the everyday language of English-speaking criminal lawyers and criminologists. It must not be forgotten that the terms 'social defence' and 'penal policy' are of Italian and of German origin respectively: each was quickly assimilated into the penal theory of continental Europe and of Latin America. But both seem to have had some difficulty in crossing the Channel or the North Atlantic. One of the ambitions of this book, which in other respects is more restricted in its scope, is precisely to facilitate such a crossing.