The rise of European criminology through European penal integration?

Abstract

While penal and detention policies in Europe have traditionally been a monopoly possessed by national states, these policies have been progressively oriented by the different organs of the Council of Europe and the European Union. This European influence is sufficiently significant for criminologists to integrate the study of these penal and detention policies at this European level. The European regulation of penal and detention policies, which has been made through the human rights perspective in order to end significant detainees’ rights violations committed by national states and to protect victims’ rights, would indeed tend to influence and account for the paradoxical and contradictory developments of national criminal policies. This shift would contribute to reinforcing the development and rise of European criminology through the study of the penal and detention policies both conducted by the European Union and the Council of Europe. The European dimension of criminology would thus be necessarily nurtured and affected by the progressive achievement of the European integration project by making it mandatory rather than desirable. In this contribution, we explore this paradox and how European criminology has evolved under the influence of European integration.