PERONA Océane

2021 ; The Police and Sexual Violence, in Policing in Francede Maillard, J. and Skogan, W.G. (eds), New York: Routledge, p.326-341

Police treatment of victims of sexual violence in France has been denounced by women's movements for decades. Police officers have been blamed for hostility towards the complainants themselves. Research in social psychology and criminology has examined the attrition of rape cases as they proceed through the criminal justice system, identifying gender stereotypes along the way. This study of units specializing in rape investigations finds that the dimensions along which officers prioritize cases are the product of professional routines rather than gender stereotypes. These lead officers to value complex cases, those with an unknown suspect, and offenders considered dangerous. These criteria structure their efforts and shape any resulting criminal sanctions.

(2018) Déqualifier les viols : une enquête sur les mains courantes de la Police Judiciaire, Droit et Société, 2 (99), p.341-355.
Summary : This article examines the role of the police in the criminal justice system's handling of rape, a role neglected by sociology and feminist criticism of sexual violence law. Based on a study of police records, it revisits one of the conclusions of feminist legal theory, namely that the criminal treatment of rape is mainly determined by the formulation of the rule of law. The data used comes from a ten-month ethnography in a Criminal Investigation Department and the use of the department's archives. The study highlights the limited autonomy of the Criminal Investigation Department in dealing with rape cases, due to structural and political constraints. It then shows that the downgrading of complaints varies according to the closeness of the relationship between the victim and the suspect, and depends on the police interpretation of the victims' passivity.

(2017) Médecins légistes et policiers face aux expertises médico-légales des victimes de violences sexuelles, Déviance et Société, 42 (3), p. 415-443.
Summary: This article looks at forensic medical examinations of victims of sexual violence and the relationship between the police who request these reports and the forensic doctors who write them. Our analysis distinguishes between two situations: those in which the medical certificate states that an injury has occurred, and those in which the certificate states that no physical injury has occurred. The latter situation puts the relationship between police officers and medical examiners to the test, and shows that each of the two professional groups has a different relationship with the victim.

(2017) La difficile mise en œuvre d'une politique du genre par l'institution policière : le cas des viols conjugaux, Champ Pénal/Penal Field [online], vol. XIV.
Summary: Based on an observation of the work of a criminal investigation department, this article highlights the limitations of the implementation of the policy to combat marital rape by the police. Investigations into marital rape are regarded with disdain by the police. This lack of interest is linked to the difficulties experienced by investigators in attesting to the absence of consent on the part of the victims. The devaluation of marital rape can also be explained by the discrepancy between this type of investigation and the investigative work of the judicial police, as idealised by the police.

(2016) "Sexualität und Strafe. Der Forschungsstand in Frankreich", 11. Beiheft der Zeitschrif "Kriminologisches Journal", p.282-295
Résumé : This article reviews the existing literature in France on the issue of sexual violence. It begins by distinguishing between works that focus on penal institutions, from the perspective of the sociology of institutions of social control, but which, until the turn of the millennium, were somewhat impervious to the sociology of gender relations. He is also interested in legal studies that are part of a feminist critique of the law and seek to explain the attrition between the number of complaints and the number of convictions. It also identifies a second category of work, produced by historians, political scientists and sociologists, which looks at changes in collective awareness of rape and the definition of sexual violence as a public problem in the second half of the 20th century. Finally, the article reviews the various studies that have attempted to quantify rape, based on administrative sources, general population surveys or data produced by specialist associations. Most of this research seeks to identify the 'black figure' of sexual violence, which corresponds to acts that have not been reported to the criminal justice system.

(2015) With the TMTC Collective "The vertical horizon of research", Socio-logos [On line], 10
Summary : Although doctoral students contribute to the development of scientific production in the same way as 'established' researchers, they do not occupy a stable position in the academic arena and, from an administrative point of view, retain the status of student throughout their thesis. The aim of this article is to study the socialisation process of these 'apprentice researchers' in two social science laboratories where horizontal relations between tenured staff and doctoral students are valued. The aim is to show how these structures shape their members over the course of their dissertation years, as well as the way in which doctoral students, between resources and constraints, 'work' their institution through (dis)investment or (re)appropriation of the mechanisms designed for, with or by them in the laboratories. The ways in which certain activities are organised and arranged, the ways in which doctoral students speak out in the laboratory arena, and even the ways in which they approach tenured staff, all reveal the markers of hierarchical relationships. It is this tension between a policy of horizontality and the verticality that structures the socialisation of doctoral students within laboratories that this group of authors sets out to examine in order to understand the social and institutional determinants of this laboratory socialisation.