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As the elder of the pair, Jacquiard was generally considered the mastermind behind the plot and it was he who attracted the greatest attention from the press and prosecutors. This collision of cultural ambition, social aspiration and criminal deviance was read at the time as clear evidence of the dangers of democracy and universal education. Indeed what the case seemed to suggest was that, rather than insuring against deviance, as was the customary contention of republicans, education had actually provided the vehicle for it.
The extant analysis has merely scratched the surface of the case for what it reveals about attitudes to youth, education and social emancipation—the main themes of this article. Beneath all of these explanations lay an anxiety about the marriage of culture and criminality. Moreover young people experience only a temporary period of subjection on account of their age. Being in a period of growth, the young are only denied their full rights of citizenship until they attain maturity. While as a component of identity it may to a great extent be secondary to others, age can nonetheless be informative.
Indeed, as this article attempts to demonstrate, in France at the start of the twentieth century, ideas about youth and criminality were tied up with concerns about democracy, education especially literacy and social stability. Nye, while illuminating, have been similarly uninformative about age as a crucial category.
The French equivalent of the British hooligan, the apache was held up as evidence of the social and moral degeneration of contemporary youth in the decades before the First World War. For instance, when observers in early nineteenth-century Britain addressed the juvenile crime problem their interest went beyond simply a concern about young people breaking the law.
Indeed, as one scholar has put it: However, it is important to resist concentrating simply on its exceptionality as this clouds our view of the ways in which it tapped into profound, existing anxieties concerning young people, education and the building of democracy. Instead, the aim in addition to restoring the case to the prominent position it once enjoyed is to use the case as a launching pad to unpack the underlying concerns that it aroused, concentrating particularly on the tensions between age, education, and democracy.
It was a classic sensationalist case, its atypicality explained its hold on the public imagination, and the press played a pivotal part in forming and feeding the fascination. From a historical point of view, too, the interest lies in its various levels of transgression. Jacquiard and Vienny defied expectations of appropriate young behaviour and were regarded as monsters — a common label applied to criminals — not just on account of the brutality of their crime but because of the degree of unsettling precocity and premeditative planning it revealed.
Spectators at the trial and readers of newspapers were encouraged to compare and contrast the behaviour of Jacquiard and Vienny with one of their victims, Louis Imbert, who had survived the attack and had been the first to raise the alarm. Journalists described his sallow complexion, his small, hooded, and blinking eyes, and his thin lips, which, they remarked with distaste, seemed to curl into a vague smile. In an article published in , jurist Henri Robert touched on the implicit contradiction of the young criminal, exclaiming: These are two words which clash and shriek to find themselves coupled together!
As we shall see, notwithstanding the fact that they had been educated in Switzerland and not France, the two boys were seen as emblems of a growing proportion of morally degenerate youths.
Concern in France at this time about the effects of literacy on popular morality and social structures was at a particular height and was directed primarily at women, workers and young people. Evidence already existed indicating the predilection of young readers, among them detainees in Petite Roquette prison, for tales of adventure and exploration, including the stories of Jules Verne. According to his half-sister, it was books that had ruined Jacquiard, and his passion for the written word was apparently shared by other members of his family.
Although it was not standard practice for itinerant workers to take reading materials with them on their travels, 35 when he had moved from Switzerland to France Jacquiard had brought his treasured collection with him, the titles and issue numbers itemized in one of his personal notebooks. Their teacher, Henri Grivel, later told investigators that although Jacquiard had lacked motivation to complete tasks, he was rather talented and had a superior memory.
For not only was Jacquiard a consumer of culture, his jottings revealed a strong aspiration to contribute to it. Hot on the trail of the escaped killers, locals had stumbled upon suitcases jettisoned by Jacquiard and Vienny in a forest not far from the Jully farm. Among the clothes and other possessions the boys had abandoned to speed up their flight, their pursuers discovered a collection of personal documents, including letters, account books, and general notebooks.
One-third of the notebook was filled with schoolwork, the bulk of it quite clearly transcribed from textbooks, and featuring descriptions of wild animals and exotic lands. However, on the next page of the notebook, the focus and register of the writing changed. Jacquiard had written what amounted to the rough beginnings of a personal memoir. In effect, he composed a sort of crude autobiography, more a basic chronicle for posterity than a sensitive attempt at self-reflection. His account of his years of schooling, for instance, amounted to just a single statement and referred only to the weather conditions of his first and last days of attendance: In particular, the case provoked discussion on the merits of compulsory, secular education which produced over-educated, under-disciplined working-class youths.
The consequences of unhealthy reading, powerfully demonstrated by Jacquiard and Vienny, were serious: Swiss migrants were regularly painted as posing a threat to employment, while Italian migrants were characterized as violent. Their passion for reading and their dreams of travel tapped into anxieties about the social repercussions of an increasingly well-educated and rootless population.
The expansion of railways and the spread of literacy went hand in hand, combining to produce a mobile, literate population. Moreover, as adolescents, they were seen to belong to a social category inherently characterized by turbulence and insubordinate inclinations which tended to acts of criminality.
The link between adolescence and crime was drawn clearly by Albert Giuliani, a doctoral student in law at the University of Dijon in the s, who began his dissertation with the observation: The primary school, with its secular programme of moral and civic education, played a crucial role in this process. Laws governing education and labour passed in the s and s built on child protection reforms introduced earlier in the century, establishing universal age thresholds of real and symbolic significance and marking out definite boundaries between childhood and adolescence — stages that had been fluid and porous in the eyes of the State.
He cannot yet earn his own living. For boys this institutional neglect lasted until entry into the military, while for girls it continued for the rest of their lives. The fact that the provision of universal primary education had occurred at the same time as a spike in the rate of juvenile offending led some observers to draw a connecting line of causation between them.
De la naissance de la République à , l'idéologie pénitentiaire demeure constante: la prison doit être un lieu de peine, mais aussi d'amendement; elle est . La Prison républicaine: () (Divers Histoire) and millions of other books are La prison républicaine, (French) Paperback – April 15,
Figaro journalist Georges Claretie pointed out the irony that it should be Auxerre — the birthplace of distinguished republican statesmen Paul Bert — that played host to the trial of the two boys. Baldet argued that education was a double-edged sword, improving social standards but simultaneously fostering discontent for the socially disenfranchised.
There was nothing more wondrous, more essential, but also more dangerous, he proclaimed, than universal primary education. While equal access to basic education was of indisputable utility, Baldet maintained, it was essential to recognize the fallout it produced: For Baldet, compulsory education, which cultivated a distaste for manual labour among children of the working classes, was likely to fuel further social tensions, rather than relieve them.
Authorities agonized over how to most effectively manage youths who were beyond the age of compulsory school attendance, but not yet old enough either to exercise their civic rights, with which they had been thoroughly familiarized on the benches of the republican primary school, or to earn a full wage.
Indeed even if they had not committed a crime, the Jully perpetrators would have still been considered troublesome figures in contemporary society purely on account of their age. Only 2 left in stock - order soon. Only 5 left in stock - order soon. Only 1 left in stock more on the way. Only 10 left in stock - order soon. Le travail et la loi Jun 17, Le travail et la loi Essais French Edition Jun 17, Available for immediate download. Only 3 left in stock - order soon. Only 4 left in stock - order soon.
For background into the study of transgression and deviance, se Although Jacquiard had been aged over sixteen at the time of the crime, following a change to legislation in which extended the age of criminal responsibility from sixteen to eighteen, the court was required to make a formal assessment according to Article 66 of the Penal Code, just as they were for Vienny, as to whether the boy had acted with or without discernement. Young people were far more frequently convicted of minor offences like vagran Shopbop Designer Fashion Brands. On sport, see Weber , pp. For a general overview of the history of conscription, see Bozon
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