Justice in resistance - Media coverage of criminal recidivism (1997-2008)

Recidivism has been debated as a public issue since the end of the 1990's. Criminal laws are enacted in order to contain this phenomenon. As of 2002 they start growing significantly repressive and ever more numerous. This criminal policy leads to major protestation among the legal, academic and intellectual worlds, as in the political opposition parties or among political figures disagreeing with the government though in the majority. Policies, laws and the debate or reactions they generate in the society hardly go without their mediatic side. Hence, we shall analyse some media to understand the meaning they give to the governments' legislative activity against criminal recidivism and what meaning these media give to the reactions this activity creates. This dissertation shows by which means the media of our corpus set both the issue of criminal recidivism and the way it is taken care of as a double-cycle. One cycle goes from a criminal reoffense in the back page news to a criminal law. The other goes from the policy about recidivism to its contesting. It also explains wherein media exposure - along which several players are involved - proceeds with this recurrence. This two-sided hypothesis points out two questions. First of all what is the meaning within this journalistic content and what does it tell about the evolution of our criminal justice ? Then, how is this meaning made ? Thus, this dissertation shall first observe the « media scene » delimited by the corpus, and then examine the mechanism of its co-production by journalists and the different players coping with criminal recidivism.