During the last decades of the twentieth century, most Western countries have experienced a considerable increase in their prison populations, with no direct link to trends in crime. This « punitive moment », which reflects the combined effects of selective social intolerance towards certain publics and of penal populism fueling security concerns, has disproportionately affected working-class communities and ethno-racial minorities. Awareness of the various problems posed by this situation has recently given rise to debate, criticism and reform in many countries, leading to some reversal of this repressive tendency. Following on from this year's course La faculté de punir, the conference Re-Imagining Punishment explores current reflections and transformations around penal and penitentiary issues, on the one hand on the European continent, notably in Finland and the Netherlands, and on the other hand in the United States, where prison inflation has been the most brutal and uneven. As France, the only Western nation not to have embarked on this path, continues, month after month, to fill its prisons, this international scientific meeting invites us to think about other perspectives on punishment.
The symposium is in English.