Police inspector Javert (French pronunciation: [ʒavɛʁ]), no first name given in the source novel, is a fictional character and a main antagonist of Victor Hugo's 1862 novel Les Misérables.

[2] First a prison guard, and then a police inspector, his character is defined by his legalist tendencies, authoritarian worldview, and lack of empathy for criminals of all forms.

He becomes a law officer on the basis of "an irrepressible hatred for that bohemian race to which he belong[s]" and a personal foundation of "rectitude, order, and honesty".

So devoted is he to this choice that, Hugo writes, "[h]e would have arrested his own father if he escaped from prison and turned in his own mother for breaking parole.

The profound confusion caused by the realizations that the law is not infallible, that he himself is not irreproachable, and that there exists a superior force (identified by Hugo with God) to what he has known, plunges him into such a despair that he commits suicide.

Years later, in 1823, the fugitive Valjean is living under the name Monsieur Madeleine and serving as the mayor of a small town identified as Montreuil-sur-Mer, where he is a successful manufacturer.

Madeleine also antagonizes Javert by dismissing his attempt to arrest Fantine, a prostitute detained for having a violent row with a street idler.

In 1832, Javert chances to meet Valjean again while leading a squad of policemen in the capture of a gang which had been terrorizing Paris for years: Patron-Minette.

Unbeknownst to Javert, the venerable elderly gentleman whom the Thénardiers and Patron-Minette intend to extort is Jean Valjean.

When Marius overhears the plans for capturing Valjean, he informs the police of the imminent crime, and is introduced to inspector Javert, who gives him two pistols to fire a signal for when he and his team should enter the building.

During the 1832 June Rebellion, Javert, working undercover to gather information about the revolutionaries, joins a group of them at the barricade they have erected in the Rue de la Chanvrerrie.

Javert wanders the streets in emotional turmoil: his mind simply cannot reconcile the image he had carried through the years of Valjean as a brutal ex-convict with his acts of kindness on the barricades.

He feels that the only possible resolution for himself is in death, and—after leaving for the prefect of police a brief letter addressing lapses in the Conciergerie — he drowns himself in the river Seine.

Since the original publication of Les Misérables in 1862, the character of Javert has appeared in a large number of adaptations in numerous types of media based on the novel, including books, films,[11] musicals, plays, games, and web-comics.

Other people who have played the character include Bradley Jaden, Michael Ball, Earl Carpenter, Clive Carter, Robert Cuccioli, Anthony Crivello, Hadley Fraser, Shuler Hensley, Brian Stokes Mitchell, Geoffrey Rush, Will Swenson, Hayden Tee, David Thaxton, Chuck Wagner, and Robert Westenberg.

[12] Inspector Franklin Jalbert, a character in the 2024 novella Danny Coughlin's Bad Dream by Stephen King, is named for, and inspired by, Javert.