Abstract
French reportage is characterized by romantic wanderings in the underworld with an eye to social change. The inherent sensationalism often overwhelms the individual subjects in question. Louis Roubaud, however, provides a counter example, one of engaged reporting on the injustices of the juvenile justice system. Visiting the public and private institutions of Interwar France, Roubaud finds that the realities of the juvenile justice apparatus do not live up to the ideals of education and rehabilitation and in fact prohibit the realization of social justice.
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Notes
- 1.
Louis Roubaud, Les Enfants de Caïn (Paris, Grasset, 1925), 186. All translations are mine.
- 2.
Loïc Wacquant, Prisons of Poverty (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2009).
- 3.
Enfants de Cain, i.
- 4.
For a history of juvenile justice, see Catherine Blatier, “Juvenile Justice in France: The Evolution of Sentencing for Children and Minor Delinquents.” The British Journal of Criminology 39 (1999): 240–52; The Battle for Children: World War II, Youth Crime and Juvenile Justice in Twentieth-Century France (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2002); Sylvia Schafer, Children in Moral Danger and the Problem of Government in Third Republic France (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997).
- 5.
Brian Barry, Why Social Justice Matters (Cambridge: Polity, 2005), 14.
- 6.
Nancy Fraser, Scales of Justice: Reimagining Political Space in a Globalizing World (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009), 16.
- 7.
Enfants de Cain, 186.
- 8.
Brian Barry, Why Social Justice Matters, 17.
- 9.
Walter Redfern. Writing on the Move: Albert Londres and Investigative Journalism (Bern: Peter Lang, 2004).
- 10.
Roubaud, Le Voleur et le sphinx (Paris, Grasset, 1925).
- 11.
At the time of Roger Abel’s death, it was widely reported that he entered the penal apparatus through private institutions before being transferred to a public correctional colony (Eysses) for adolescent boys.
- 12.
Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish. The Birth of the Prison, translated by Alan Sheridan (New York: Random House, 1977). See also Stephen A. Toth, Mettray. A History of France’s Most Venerated Carceral Institution (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2019).
- 13.
« Pasteurs des enfants perdus » Le Petit Parisien.
- 14.
Paul Aron, « Entre journalisme et littérature, l’institution du reportage, » COnTEXTES 11 (2012): 2–17.
- 15.
Enfants de Cain, 15.
- 16.
Kari Evanson, “Grand Reporters in Guyane: Bringing the Exotic Back Home,” in Locating Guyane, Sarah Wood and Catriona MacLeod, eds. (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2018), 33–47.
- 17.
Marie-Eve Thérenty, “Dante reporter: La création d’un paradigme journalistique,” Autour de Vallès 38 (2008): 57–72.
- 18.
Thérenty, 59.
- 19.
Enfants de Cain, 149.
- 20.
Pasteurs, 5 April 1937.
- 21.
Ibid.
- 22.
Ibid.
- 23.
Luc Boltanksi and Elisabeth Claverie, « Le monde social en tant que scène d’un procès, » in Affaires, scandales et grandes causes. De Socrate à Pinochet, Luc Boltanksi et al, eds. (Paris: Stock, 2007), 395–452.
- 24.
« J’ai quatre amis » Le Quotidien (3 Septembre 1924).
- 25.
Luc Boltanksi Distant Suffering. Morality, Media and Politics, Graham D. Burchell, trans. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999).
- 26.
Enfants de Cain, 179.
- 27.
Sylvia Schafer, Children in Moral Danger.
- 28.
David Miller, Principles of Social Justice.
- 29.
36 quai des Orfèvres, 181.
- 30.
For an application of social justice theory to criminal justice, see Matthew Robinson, “Assessing Criminal Justice Using Social Justice Theory,” Social Justice Research 23:1 (March 2010), 77–97.
- 31.
36 quai des Orfèvres, 201.
- 32.
Pasteurs, 12 April 1937.
- 33.
Cain, 175.
- 34.
Pasteurs, 12 May 1937.
- 35.
Pasteurs, 16 May 1937.
- 36.
36 quai des Orfévres, 141.
- 37.
143.
- 38.
Lettres de cachet were letters signed by the King of France permitting incarceration without judgment, exile or the internment of those deemed undesirable by the monarchy.
- 39.
Pasteurs, 16 May 1937.
- 40.
Pasteurs, 27 May 1937.
- 41.
Pasteurs, 12 April 1937.
- 42.
Pasteurs, 27 May.
- 43.
See Kari Evanson, Writing Scandal: Popular Media and the Bagnes d’Enfants, 1920–1945 (PhD Diss., New York University, 2012).
- 44.
Sarah Fishman, The Battle for Children: World War II, Youth Crime and Juvenile Justice in Twentieth-Century France (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2002).
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Evanson, K. (2022). Louis Roubaud, Social Justice and Lost Children. In: Alexander, R., McDonald, W. (eds) Literary Journalism and Social Justice . Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-89420-7_3
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