Edouard Ducpétiaux

Edouard Antoine Ducpétiaux , born with Brussels on June 29th, 1804 and died in this same city on July 21st, 1868, was a Belgian journalist . He was also a reformer of the Belgian penitentiary system.

Biography

Journalist under the the United Kingdom of the Netherlands

Resulting from a middle-class family, Edouard Ducpétiaux attended the universities of Liege, Leyde and Ghent. He obtained his diploma for the occupation of doctor in Right on July 14th, 1827. Its finished studies, he did not become however lawyer, but publicity agent, i.e. journalist.

Little time afterwards, it wrote capital punishment (1827) where it seeks to show the cruelty and the inefficiency of the capital punishment. He made in general appear ensuitre two booklets ( Of the justice of precaution, and particularly of the influence of misery and ease, ignorance and the instruction on the number of the crimes and Of justice of repression and particularly of the uselessness and the pernicious effects of the capital punishment ) commenting on repressive penal system and capital punishment in particular (1827) of Charles Lucas.

Following criticisms which the new penal code had wiped, Carel Asser, chief clerk with the Council of State and attache to the ministry for Justice, had published Blow-with eye on some essential principles of the criminal right, in their relationship with the project of penal code in order to refute them. Ducpétiaux criticized this work in January 1828 in critical Observations on the apology for the capital punishment, by Mr. C. Asser, secretary of the commission on the drafting of the new penal code . Asser carried felt sorry for against Ducpétiaux and its booklet was seized the February 24th. He was shown forgery, of partial counterfeit, swindle and calumny. Ducpétiaux then addressed to the Lower House Dutch Parliament a specimen of its booklet accompanied by a petition protesting against the continuations of which it was the object. It obtained the support of members of Parliament such as Charles de Brouckère, Charles Hon and Dirk Donker Curtius. Ducpétiaux ends up being discharged of all the loads retained against him.

July 1st of the same year, two French journalists of Argus , Louis Bellet and Henri Jador, were condemned by the Court of Assizes of the Brabant-Southerner to one year of prison to have written a critical joke against a tax and the project again penal code. Having called upon royal leniency, the sorrow was given, but they were expelled of the Dutch territory. Writer with the Mail of the Netherlands , newspaper of Brussels of liberal tendency , Ducpétiaux wrote on October 28th, 1828 an article in favor of the two French, affirming that the constitution had been violated. The following day, he was imprisoned with the prison of the Small-Carmelite friars, was shown to have spread news tending to disturb the peaceful citizens, to have sought in his writings to sow the distrust against the government of His Majesty, and division among the inhabitants, to have disturbed the good order in the kingdom, to have offended and have insulted senior officials of the State . The December 13rd, it was condemned to one year of prison and 500 guilders of fine. In all, it made more than one year of prison because it was released only on January 27th, 1830, one year after its appeal. During its imprisonment, it continued to write articles for its newspaper.

During the Belgian Revolution

August 25th, 1830, the Belgian revolution began. The 26, Lucien Jottrand, lawyer and writer with the Mail of the Netherlands , charged his/her Ducpétiaux colleague with replacing the French flags which floated a little everywhere in Brussels by that of transitory the State-Belgium-Plain. Ducpétiaux made sew by Marie Abts the two first Belgian flags which floated on the balcony of the Town hall of Brussels.

In September, as a lieutenant of the middle-class guard, it took part in the maintenance of law and order. The prince Frederic then made proclaim that it was going to go on Brussels and that any resistance would be pushed back by the weapons. In front of this threat, an address was written the September 22nd for the prince so that it suspends his operation, an extraordinary session of the General states having been convened to find a solution with the Belgian events. Ducpétiaux was charged to bring the document to the district-general of the prince to Vilvorde. On the spot, it was stopped and transferred to the citadel from Antwerp where a military commission condemned it to death.

After various negociations between the Belgian provisional authorities and prince Frederic, Ducpétiaux was slackening by the prince d' Orange which replaced temporarily his/her brother. The October 11th, Ducpétiaux was of return to Brussels; it set out again in Antwerp the 13 to in vain negotiate with Frederic the prisoner exchange.

It took part then in the catch of Antwerp and failed to be made elect in November with the National congress.

General inspector of the prisons and the establishments of benevolence

November 29th, 1830, the provisional government appointed it general inspector of the prisons and of the establishments of benevolence, posts that it occupied until in 1861.

As of 1832, it submitted to the government a bill aiming at reforming the “houses of lunatics”.

In the penitentiary field, Ducpétiaux thought that the prison was to regenerate the prisoners, regeneration passing by the atonement, the amendment, the organization of work, education, elementary religious teaching and industrial teaching and finally the continual insulation of the prisoners. In complement of the action of the prisons, he saw in the patronage of the released prisoners a means of social rehabilitation.

He militated for the adoption of the cellular system and the prison of Leuwen, inaugurated in 1860, was regarded as a model of the genre. Ducpétiaux thought that the separate imprisonment answered triple drank sorrow (repression, prevention and amendment) and that this system replaced the capital punishment most effectively.

It made create Schools of reform to Ruiselede (for the boys), Beernem (for the girls) and Wingene (intended to form pupil-foams): it was about penal settlements intended to withdraw the youngest prisoners of the influence of the older prisoners and to teach them a trade.

In 1843, it published physical and moral condition young workmen and means of improving it where it supports that the State, as a representative of the whole of the company, must imply in the amélioraton living conditions of the working class and not to leave this mission of depending only on the good will of employers. It recommends there in particular obligatory teaching until the fifteen years age for the girls as for the boys, the prohibition of work for the children of less than ten years and of the schedules limited for the older children or creation of what will become the Factory inspectorate.

Member of the central Commission of statistics

In 1841, Ducpétiaux became Member of the central Commission of statistisque that the government had just created. It published many articles in the bulletin of the Commission.

It published in 1855 Economic budgets of the working classes in Belgium: subsistence, wages, population , results of the first statistical survey on the household budget. The work was an information source on Belgium for Karl Marx which will quote it in the Capital (Book first).

End-of-life

At 57 years, it made a pilgrimage in Rome. At the time of its return to Brussels, it created the General Review in 1865, re-examined which always exists.

An avenue of Saint-Gilles, close to Brussels, bears its name.

Distinctions

April 11th, 1847, it became corresponding royal Académie of Belgium (class of the letters and sciences morals and policies). May 4th, 1859, he was elected regular member.

He was also corresponding Institut of France (Academy of Science morals and political, section of morals) since February 16th, 1856: he succeeded Goswin de Stassart, first president of the Belgian Sénat.

Works

'' Of the capital punishment '', 1827 (downloadable on Google Books)
“Of the state of the prisons in France and the penitentiary reform” in Re-examined foreign and Frenchwoman of legislation , volume 4,1837
Of progress and the current status of the penitentiary reform and the preventive institutions, in the United States, in France, in Switzerland, in England and Belgium , 1837 - 1838
Of the physical and moral condition of the young workmen and the means of improving it , Volume I & Volume II, 1843, (downloadable on Gallica)
'' pauperism in Belgium - Causes and remedies '', 1844 (downloadable on Gallica)
Memory on the organization of the schools of reform , 1848
agricultural Colonies, rural schools and schools of reform for the poor ones, the beggars and the vagrants and especially for the children of the two sexes, in Switzerland, in Germany, in France, in England, in the Netherlands and in Belgium , 1851
Of the conditions of system of the separate or cellular imprisonment , 1858
Of the patronage of condemned released the , 1859
Of association in its relationship with the improvement of the fate of the working class , 1860
penal colonization and cellular imprisonment , 1861
Architecture of the cellular prisons - Study of a program for the construction of the cellular prisons , 1863
the question of the capital punishment under consideration in its topicality , 1865

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