The death of Robert Badinter sparked a rare moment of unanimity in the French political class, which entirely paid tribute to the former lawyer and Minister of Justice - from Marine Le Pen who recalls
"not sharing all the struggles"
of the deceased, to Jean-Luc Mélenchon who, notwithstanding again
“disagreements” ,
“admired
him so much”
.
Most, between the two ends of the spectrum, paid particular tribute to the father of the abolition of the death penalty, through a law which he defended before Parliament and which was promulgated on October 9, 1981. Today, no major candidate or political party is proposing to reinstate it, even if on several occasions in the past, Marine Le Pen has said she is in favor of it.
However, since 1981, the debate has continued to divide French society.
In total, more than thirty legislative proposals have been tabled to restore it, supported by certain famous deputies such as Charles Pasqua, Jean-Marie Le Pen or even... Christian Estrosi!
In 1991, the current mayor of Nice submitted a text in reaction to the rapes and murders of two little girls committed by the repeat pedophile Christian Van Geloven.
He seems to have come back from it, since he declared in 2017 in an interview with Le
Parisien
that he
“hates Christian Estrosi who voted to reinstate the death penalty”
.
Also read: Death of Badinter: the long road to the abolition of capital punishment
In fact, most of the times when the death penalty has returned to the forefront of politics correspond to the media coverage of sordid cases involving a crime committed by a repeat offender already convicted in the past.
Proposing the reestablishment of the death penalty is often, for right-wing politicians, an opportunity to flex their muscles in terms of penal severity and to bring justice to trial for laxity.
“The fact that the senator from Lot-et-Garonne
[Jean-François Poncet, author in 1984 of the first text in this sense, Editor's note]
drafted his bill after the murder of two little girls in his department, shows that electoral considerations are never really absent from the debate
,” comments historian Jean-Yves Le Naour in his
History of the Abolition of the Death Penalty
.
55% of French people in favor of reinstating the death penalty in 2020
But even more than the political class, which today seems to have made up its mind, it is public opinion which has been gripped by a profound dilemma on the subject for forty years.
Remember that at the time the abolition was voted on, a survey published by
Le Figaro
indicated that 6 out of 10 French people were, on the contrary, in favor of maintaining the death penalty.
This proportion drops a little but support for reinstating the death penalty remains in the majority for twenty years, before collapsing at the dawn of the 21st century: in the first decade of the 2000s, it collapsed to only 30%. of opinion.
Evolution of opinion in favor of the death penalty.
Ipsos and TNS-Sofres data synthesized by France Inter.
Then at the turn of the 2010s, more and more French people wanted the death penalty to be reinstated, and regularly, polls even show that this opinion is once again in the majority.
One of the latest to hit the headlines dates back to 2020: according to an Ipsos / Sopra Steria study, 55% of French people wanted to restore it.
Several readings of this data can be made.
On the one hand, analysts have admitted the decisive role that Robert Badinter played in convincing the legislator to go against public opinion to vote for abolition.
As is often the case in matters of social reform (recently, support for marriage for all has once again proven this), a law which shakes up majority opinion ends up, by being applied in the years that follow, by convincing public opinion to its merits.
This is what happened with the death penalty, the abolition of which was accepted twenty years later by more than two out of three French people.
However, it took time:
“Opposition to the death penalty in France was slow to endorse what had been the choice of abolition in 1981
,” confirms Emmanuel Rivière, director of political studies at Kantar Public, at France Inter.
“Which clearly shows that François Mitterrand had taken the opposite view of French opinion which took a very long time to turn around.”
Read also: The French majority are in favor of reinstating the death penalty, according to a study
Emmanuel Rivière again notes a generational conflict: younger generations who have not experienced the application of the death penalty would have been more inclined, according to him, to accept its abolition once and for all.
But the argument can also be turned around in the other direction: Robert Badinter is dead, and a generation of adults had not yet been born at the time when the eloquence of his words left a lasting mark on the moral benchmarks of society. whole.
The 2015 attacks, a tipping point
Moreover, the changes in public opinion on this subject since then have negatively portrayed the crumbling of French confidence in justice.
The desire to reinstate the death penalty thus increased throughout Christiane Taubira's visit to Place Vendôme, considered as the spearhead of an ideology advocating less repressive justice by a significant part of the public.
The attacks of 2015, by awakening in the collective unconscious a form of abhorrence in the face of the personified figure of evil through certain criminals, also played a role: terrorism resurrects the idea that certain particularly serious acts would be unforgivable - this debate , at the time, was involved in the failed attempt to strip terrorists of their nationality.
The increase, this year again, in all the indicators of violence, each time fuels a little more a feeling of insecurity which is reflected in words that come to feed the concern of a country prey to "
wildness"
or even
“decivilization”
.
Wanted less for itself than for what it represents, the reinstatement of the death penalty catalyzes the anxiety of a society which is once again locked in endemic violence against which justice, too lenient or too cumbersome, could no longer cope.
Proof of this is that if France is divided into two practically equal parts on the subject, no large-scale demonstration or relayed political request has given substance to the feelings of those who say they are in favor of reinstating the death penalty.
This membership must be seen for what it is: a signal, and a warning.