L'internement en Belgique : une « troisième voie » qui en cherche une autre…

In 1930, Belgium made the choice of a social defense system for the care of “insane delinquents”. This system, which will prevail throughout the twentieth century, has long sought an improbable balance between care and control, at the heart of a model sometimes called “para-penal”. It draws its sources from an ideology of dangerousness which, at the end of the nineteenth century, calls into question a criminal law based on a principle of responsibility, considered insufficient in the face of the threat posed by insane and semi-insane people. Widely criticized for its deficiencies in law and care deficit, this hybrid legal regime has undergone a substantial reform in 2014, the practical scope of which is still difficult to assess.