GLOSSAE. European Journal of Legal History 17 (2020)
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GLOSSAE. European Journal of Legal History 17 (2020) ISSN 2255-2707 Edited by Institute for Social, Political and Legal Studies (Valencia, Spain) Honorary Chief Editor Antonio Pérez Martín, University of Murcia Chief Editor Aniceto Masferrer, University of Valencia Assistant Chief Editors Wim Decock, University of Leuven Juan A. Obarrio Moreno, University of Valencia Editorial Board Isabel Ramos Vázquez, University of Jaén (Secretary) José Franco-Chasán, University of Augsburg Fernando Hernández Fradejas, University of Valladolid Anna Taitslin, Australian National University – University of Canberra M.C. Mirow, Florida International University José Miguel Piquer, University of Valencia Andrew Simpson, University of Aberdeen International Advisory Board Javier Alvarado Planas, UNED; Juan Baró Pazos, University of Cantabria; Mary Sarah Bilder, Boston College; Orazio Condorelli, University of Catania; Emanuele Conte, University of Rome III; Daniel R. Coquillette, Boston College – Harvard University; Serge Dauchy, University of Lille; Salustiano de Dios, University of Salamanca; José Domingues, University of Lusíada; Seán Patrick Donlan, The University of the South Pacific; Matthew Dyson, University of Oxford; Antonio Fernández de Buján, University Autónoma de Madrid; Remedios Ferrero, University of Valencia; Manuel Gutan, Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu; Alejandro Guzmán Brito, Pontificial Catholic University of Valparaiso; Jan Hallebeek, VU University Amsterdam; Dirk Heirbaut, Ghent University; Richard Helmholz, University of Chicago; David Ibbetson, University of Cambridge; Emily Kadens, University of Northwestern; Mia Korpiola, University of Turku; Pia Letto-Vanamo, University of Helsinki; David Lieberman, University of California at Berkeley; Jose María Llanos Pitarch, University of Valencia; Marju Luts-Sootak, University of Tartu; Magdalena Martínez Almira, University of Alicante; Pascual Marzal Rodríguez, University of Valencia; Dag Michaelsen, University of Oslo; María Asunción Mollá Nebot, University of Valencia; Emma; Montanos Ferrín, University of La Coruña; Olivier Moréteau, Louisiana State University; John Finlay, University of Glasgow; Kjell Å Modéer, Lund University; Anthony Musson, University of Exeter; Vernon V. Palmer, Tulane University; Agustin Parise, Maastricht University; Heikki Pihlajamäki, University of Helsinki; Jacques du Plessis, Stellenbosch University; Merike Ristikivi, University of Tartu; Remco van Rhee, Maastricht University; Luis Rodríguez Ennes, University of Vigo; Jonathan Rose, Arizona State University; Carlos Sánchez-Moreno Ellar, University of Valencia; Mortimer N.S. Sellers, University of Baltimore; Jørn Øyrehagen Sunde, University of Bergen; Ditlev Tamm, University of Copenhagen; José María Vallejo García-Hevia, University of Castilla-La Mancha; Norbert Varga, University of Szeged; Tammo Wallinga, University of Rotterdam; José Luís Zamora Manzano, University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria Citation Richard F. Wetzell, “About the concept of the ‘dangerous individual’ in turn-of-the-century penal reform: Debates on recidivism, état dangereux, indeterminate sentencing, and civil liberty in the International Union of Penal Law, 1889- 1914”, GLOSSAE. European Journal of Legal History 17 (2020), pp. 119-149 (available at http://www.glossae.eu) GLOSSAE. European Journal of Legal History 17 (2020) About the concept of the ‘dangerous individual’ in turn-of-the-century penal reform: Debates on recidivism, état dangereux, indeterminate sentencing, and civil liberty in the International Union of Penal Law, 1889-1914 Richard F. Wetzell German Historical Institute Washington Received: 28.4.2020 Accepted: 25.7.2020 Abstract Alluding to Michel Foucault’s famous article on the “concept of the ‘dangerous individual’ in 19th-century legal psychiatry” in the title,1 this article provides an overview of the founding of the International Union of Penal Law (IUPL), its penal reform agenda and major activities, before turning to a detailed examination and analysis of the IUPL’s debates, at its congresses from 1889 to 1913, on a central topic: special measures to be taken against so- called “incorrigible habitual criminals” or “dangerous” recidivists (the terminology varied over time). By analyzing recurring patterns of argumentation as well as their development over time, the article pursues three goals. First, it reveals the IUPL’s failure to live up to its own demand that penal policy should be based on empirical criminological and penological research; second, it elucidates the role of civil liberty concerns within the IUPL by demonstrating that prominent critical voices objected to subjective criteria for “dangerousness” and to indeterminate sentencing as threats to individual freedom; third, by tracing the role of the three founders in these debates, it offers a fresh comparison of the penal reform agendas of Liszt, van Hamel, and Prins. Keywords International Union of Penal Law, Union Internationale de Droit Pénal, Internationale Kriminalistische Vereinigung, transnational penal reform, habitual criminals, recidivism, incorrigibility, dangerousness, état dangereux, indeterminate sentencing, security measures, mental deficiency, social defense, modern school, positivism, Franz von Liszt, Adolphe Prins, and Gerard Anton van Hamel Summary: 1. The founding of the IUPL. 2. The three founders: Liszt, van Hamel, and Prins. 3. The IUPL’s reform agenda. 4. The first phase (1889-1894): IUPL debates on recidivism, habitual criminality, indeterminate sentencing, and civil liberty. 5. The second phase (1905-1913): IUPL debates on état dangereux, security measures, and individual liberty. 6. Conclusions. Bibliographical References * This work has been undertaken in the context of the International GERN Seminar (Groupe Européen de Recherches sur les Normativités) organized by Yves Cartuyvels (University of Saint-Louis – Bruxelles, Belgium) and Aniceto Masferrer (University of Valencia, Spain), and of the research project entitled “Las influencias extranjeras en la Codificación penal española: su concreto alcance en la Parte Especial de los Códigos decimonónicos” (ref. DER2016-78388-P), funded by the Spanish ‘Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad’ (2017-2020) and by the Groupe Européen de Recherches sur les Normativités (GERN) Interlabo (2019-2020). 1 Foucault, M., “About the Concept of the ‘Dangerous Individual’ in 19th-Century Legal Psychiatry,” International Journal of Law and Psychiatry 1 (1978), pp. 1–18. 120 GLOSSAE. European Journal of Legal History 17 (2020) 1. The founding of the IUPL On 17 September 1888 three professors of criminal law – Franz von Liszt, Adolphe Prins, and Gerard Anton van Hamel – founded the Union Internationale de Droit Pénal (UIDP) or Internationale Kriminalistische Vereinigung (IKV; in English: International Union of Penal Law or IUPL), which became the most important forum of transnational exchange in the field of penal reform in the quarter-century from its founding until the outbreak of the First World War. Van Hamel, professor of criminal law at the University of Amsterdam, had sought out contact with Liszt in Germany a few years earlier, after being impressed by Liszt’s programmatic article “Der Zweckgedanke im Strafrecht”.2 Liszt and Prins, professor of criminal law in Brussels, had come into contact after Liszt had published a positive review of Prins’s 1886 book Criminalité et répression.3 After all three founders recruited members among their colleagues across Europe, the IUPL became an active association on 1 January 1889, with seventy-five members.4 The IUPL was not the first international venture in the field of criminal justice.5 Prison reformers had organized a first international congress in Frankfurt in 1846 and, starting in 1872, international prison congresses were organized by the International Penitentiary Commission (IPC) at regular intervalls, about every five years. The IPC consisted of official government representatives, usually the heads of the national prison bureaux; although IPC congresses attracted a variety of penal experts (including judges, prosecutors, attorneys, and law professors), the majority of attendees consisted of practitioners of prison administration (prison directors, bureaucrats, and prison staff).6 When the international penitentiary congress met in Rome in 1885, Cesare Lombroso and his supporters organized an alternative event, the first International Congress for Criminal Anthropology, which gave rise to a sequence of seven international congresses before the First World War. While the criminal-anthropological congresses were attended by a variety of experts in criminal justice, they were mainly a forum for medical professionals, especially psychiatrists, who were interested in criminological research.7 The International Union of Penal Law (IUPL), which forms the subject of this article, differed from both organizations in at least two ways. First, whereas the IPC congresses focused on prison reform and the anthropological congresses focused on criminological research, the IUPL was primarily interested in reforming the criminal law. Second, even though the IUPL’s membership 2 Hamel, G.A. van, “Zur Erinnerung und zum Abschied,” Mitteilungen der Internationalen Kriminalistischen Vereinigung 21 (1914), pp. 440–45. 3 Liszt, F. von, “Der strategische Ausgangspunkt im staatlichen Kampfe gegen das Verbrechen. Eine Stimme aus Belgien,” Zeitschrift für die gesamte Strafrechtswissenschaft 7 (1887), pp. 179–86. 4 Liszt, F. von, “Die Entstehung der