Imprisoned Rehabilitation: Educators, Guards and Jurisdictional Conflicts in a French Youth Prison

Whereas in France, youth prisons have long been regarded as anti-rehabilitative facilities, a law passed in 2002 required juvenile justice educators to re-enter prison spaces. Drawing on an ethnography of the “minors’ wing” within an adult prison, we analyse the “jurisdictional conflicts” between guards, primarily responsible for the security within the walls, and educators, intended to bring more rehabilitative soul to incarceration. In particular, we show how professional controversies relating to prison order and the discipline underpinning its construction and reproduction reflect the growing tensions that have been unsettling the French juvenile justice system for at least twenty years.