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SMEETS Sybille
Units
Center of criminological researchs
Person in charge of the Unit : Oui
Officially created in 2000, the Criminological Research Centre has developed its research activities since 1995 within the School for Criminological Sciences, an annex of the Law School of the Université Libre de Bruxelles (Free University of Brussels). The members of the CRC (27 members) are all criminologists, but most have training in law, sociology, anthropology, political science, philosophy, psychology or history as well, so that research is eminently interdisciplinary. Through its participation in most of the governmental research projects, the CRC has gradually developed expertise within the framework of empirical research, particularly in qualitative methods. This expertise covers most of the functioning of criminal justice, ranging from police to prison and including the public prosecutor, juvenile justice, assistance for youth, the criminal code and social work within the justice system. It generally focuses on crucial issues: local police and policing, security feeling, youth conflicts, local courts, community sanctions, drug use, justice system models, restorative justice and so on.
Projetcs
Integration of polices in Belgium. Towards a security management police ?
PhD
Deep qualitative research of intervention processes and interactions the way they happen in situ, within the framework of a comparison between the three concerned institutions and in relation to a continuum stretching out from a security pole to an educational pole. Doctoral Thesis.
History of Clinical and Criminological Knowledges
History of Clinical & Criminological Knowledges
Justiciables, Management and Meaningfulness of Penalty : Towards a Prospective Analysis
his project is a further development of the concerted research action Penalty and social change. What penal Justice for the 21st century?, carried out by the Criminological Research Centre and aims at producing an innovative and original reflection on what other forms of resolution of conflicts might emerge. With this intention, the criminologists of the Criminological Research Centre joined the team of the Department of Public Management, whose former research works now allow to consider a theoretical and empirical study of penalty from angles, which are certainly different, but above all complementary, convergent and primarily new. Three findings from this former research work underlie the project, findings which refer to three analysis levels: that of the relative ignorance regarding the socio-penal trajectories of the justiciables (micro level), that of the increasingly important place taken up by the reference to management in penalty (meso level) and, finally, that of the need for querying penalty and the social purposes it pursues (macro level). Distinct levels, a priori relatively distant, but that this project will endeavour to articulate around the following question: if the meaningfulness of penalty now seems to be missing at the political level, can it be sought, on the one hand, in the organisational analysis of the changes which penalty is going through and, on the other hand, in the trajectories of the justiciables ?
PhD
Police, policing and public safety
Study of the transfer of tasks between police and policing (especially linked to surveillance of public space) based on the broken window theory and community policing doctrine and the implementation of peace keepers, local administrative penalties and 'proximity policing'.
Etude critique des systèmes de classification des maladies et trouble mentaux associés à la délinquance et la déviance dans une perspective épistémologique et d'histoire des sciences
Les stratégies d'adaptation des détenus et du personnel pénitentiaire. Le cas du Centre pénitentiaire et de rééducation Kasapa (Lubumbashi), Thèse de doctorat en criminologie, Co-tutelle Ecole de criminologie de l'Université de Lubumbashi ' Ecole des sciences criminologiques de l'ULB (2007-2010), direction : P. Kaumba Lufunda et Ph. Mary.
The Welfare workers in justice: which ideology(ies) behind the social work in justice ?
Thesis.
Penality and social change. What kind of penal justice for the 21th century ?
This research's aim is to analyze the transformation of penality in Belgium related to social change. It has two main hypothesis : the first one is ''the penal treatment of social issues'', the other one is the emerging of restorative justic
The project aims at producing comparative, European added value based on knowledge accrued within national frameworks about social, political, economic, legal and cultural factors conducive to socially deviant behaviour and crime, their perception among the public and the public policies pertaining to these phenomena. The project defines four objectives: - The production of scholarly added value by the systematic use of comparisons within the European Union, thanks to the great variety of situations in the different member countries, which represents a sort of natural laboratory. - The dissemination of the scholarly added value produced, (a) within the Consortium; (b) more widely, within the scientific community; (c) among officials at different governmental levels throughout Europe; and (d) to the various stakeholders in these subjects (media actors, NGOs, the private security sector or others). - The development of an interdisciplinary scientific network susceptible of (a) gradually integrating competent centres in different countries, starting from a solid core group . A specific emphasis will be put on integrating recent EU member and candidate countries, whith the aim of fostering partnerships and helping consolidate research on socially deviant behaviours and prevention ; (b) establishing relevant scholarly cooperation with centres located outside the European Union.- The provision, for officials at various governmental levels, of methodological skills bearing on assistance in decision-making, measurement of facts and evaluation of public policies, in order to contribute to the work of monitoring centres at supra-national, national or infra-national levels.
Study Of The Modalities And Limits Of The Dialogue Between Law And Clinical Social Sciences
Study Of The Modalities And Limits Of The Dialogue Between Law And Clinical Social Sciences
Restorative justice, towards a new justice model ? Comparative Study between Belgium and Denmark
The objective of this project is to take distance with respect to a technical or philosophical approach of restorative justice in order to explore 'sociologically' the process of construction and development of the realm of restorative justice as well as its strategical effects. In this framework, the study of the various forces leading to the development of restorative programs will be carried out. Firstly, it will emphasize the nature of the change envisioned by these programs for the penal realm. Secondly, it will stress the social dimension of these programs in showing how various discourses and practices of restorative justice emerge, change and are eventually progressively stabilized in specific penal, political and social context. The comparative perspective of the project aims to investigate the concrete emergence and development of this new philosophy in particular political, social and penal contexts (in Belgium and Denmark). It should thus allow better understanding how and why discourses and practices of restorative justice gain importance our contemporary societies in general (Garland & Young, 1983 ; Garland,1990).
