Which Moral Influences on European penal and prison policies?

Introduction

The JUST_PEN Project aims to analyse the strategies private interest groups use to try to influence European penal and prison policies through notably litigation and judicial complaints lodged with the European Court of Human Rights and the Court of Justice of the European Union.

Research Framework

In relying notably on a current national research grant on “the European Human Rights Justice under Moral Influences?”, the JUST_PEN project will analyse whether or not the moral and religious values promoted by these private interest groups have influenced and have even been taken into account or even been adopted by the European penal and prison policies.

Influence Strategies

In this respect, the project will investigate the ways in which these private interest groups try to influence these policies using:

• Doctrinal tactics
• Judicial tactics (notably through litigation and monitoring efforts)
• Political tactics

Effects of Strategies

In terms of effects of these strategies, we will investigate how and to what extent these tactics are translated into penal and prison policies, notably through a process of coercive human rights that refer to the coercive aspect (the enactment of criminal law and the use of criminal sanctions) of human rights protection.

Theoretical Model

In doing so, we will propose a new theoretical model: the ‘moral entrepreneur of jurisprudence’ that is all about powerful private actors who do not behave as philanthropists but are driven by material interests taking creative initiatives which involve shaping or reshaping case law on penal and prison policies.

Impact on Policies

In doing so, they can either reinforce or, on the contrary, moderate and even lenify the coercive dimension of human rights and contribute through this process to orient significantly penal and prison policies.

Paradigm Shift

The JUST_PEN project intends thus to achieve a significant paradigm shift within the existing literature on human rights, European law, and penal and prison policies by combining all these domains that are ignored by the existing legal, socio-legal, and criminological literature.