Surveillance électronique et justice pénale : quelques éléments de pérennité et de changement

Electronic monitoring of offenders is regularly portrayed as a measure which contributes to modernize the contemporary criminal justice system. Such a technical device, appearing in a context of alternative measures and diversion, can be seen at first sight in contradiction with the opening of criminal justice to interactive procedures. Some empirical data (collected during a research program carried out in Belgium) will help this article to enlighten some effects of the assimilation of a technical object in the actual criminal justice process, in particular in the field of penalty. Some of these elements will allow us to underline the creative potential of the technology as much as its ability to relay the secular logic of the penal system