This thesis explores recent Scottish penal culture through the biographical narrative accounts of retired judges. Insights from the sociology of punishment are used to develop a more fully cultural approach to the judiciary and to sentencing practice. This entails a view of the judiciary as a complex institution whose practices reflect tension and compromise, and which recognises judges as bearers of penal culture through their sentencing practices. The aims of the research are twofold: to provide insight into the changing conditions of judging in Scotland and into the judicial role in criminal justice. Narrative research methods were used to interview retired judges and gain contextual accounts of judicial life and practice. This approach focuses on subjectivity and on individual responses to experiences and constraints. Reflecting the judicial role in punishment, an interpretive position based on the hermeneutics of faith and suspicion is used to evaluate and interpret these narrative accounts. This conceptual and methodological framework is used to explore aspects of judicial occupational culture including training and early experiences, the status of criminal work, judicial conduct, collegiality, the influence of criminological research on sentencing practice, and the relevance of the ‘master narrative’ - judicial independence - to sentencing. It is also used to explore the frameworks of meaning and vocabularies of motive which judges bring to penal practice. What emerges from these judicial narratives is firstly the entanglement of individual life histories and organisational imperatives. Secondly, a picture emerges of a judicial habitus that includes complex motivations, some openness to new approaches, and capacity for reflecting on the conditions which structure and constrain criminal justice practice. This suggests the reflexive judge may be an important vector of penal change and there are implications for judicial training, penal reform and for the dissemination of criminological and criminal justice research.

Procédant dʼune volonté de modernisation et de rationalisation de lʼinstitution judiciaire, la présence des nouvelles technologies dans l’administration de la justice pénale est croissante. Ces outils esquissent un changement sans précédent, dans une institution pourtant marquée par un certain traditionalisme. Touchant aux aspects juridiques, symboliques, humains, et gestionnaires de lʼintervention judiciaire, cette émergence du numérique pose les jalons de la justice pénale du XXIe siècle. Inexorablement, le formalisme qui caractérise lʼinstant de justice, procédural ou ritualisé, subit de profondes modifications, parfois dans le sens dʼune altération ; le fond culturel fondamental de la justice pénal est alors mis à lʼépreuve. Entre influence néfaste et renouveau bénéfique, les apports de ces instruments du travail judiciaire sont marqués par lʼambivalence. La résistance obstinée semble inadaptée, et le modernisme irréfléchi au nom d’une optimisation des moyens de l’institution, à proscrire. Seule la régulation de lʼusage dʼoutils qui sʼimmiscent jusque dans le contenu de la décision de justice peut être gage dʼune évolution harmonieuse. Afin que cette transition technologique nʼinduise pas une dénaturation de lʼintervention judiciaire, mais constitue au contraire, une aide à la relégitimisation dʼune justice pénale encore traversée par une crise à la fois de confiance et fonctionnelle, un véritable processus dʼintégration des nouvelles technologies doit sʼinstaurer, mêlant considérations éthiques, juridiques et institutionnelles / As a result of a will to modernize and rationalize the legal institution, the use of new technologies in criminal courts administration is increasing. Nowadays, those tools of communication, information, and management represent essential ways of evolution of justice, at the heart of its performance. They imply an unprecedented change for an institution marked by a certain traditionalism. Related to judicial, symbolic, human and managerial aspects of the legal intervention, the emergence of digital is paving the way of (characterizing) the criminal justice in the XXI century. Inexorably, the formalism characterizing the justice moment, procedural or ritualized, is going through deep changes. Sometimes those changes are distorting the cultural founding of criminal justice. Between bad influence and beneficial renewal, the inputs of these judicial work tools are characterized by ambivalence. The obstinate opposition is inadequate. As the thoughtless modernism to optimize the institution tools, is to proscribe. The regulation of the tools’ practice, which is even involved in the content of the justice decision, is a necessity to ensure a smooth evolution. In order to avoid a denaturation of the legal intervention, a real integration processs of new technologies should be established, mixing ethical, legal and institutional considerations. In that way, this technological transition will be helping to legitimate the criminal justice, still affected by a functional and trust crisis