The Experience of Imprisonment

This paper analyzes the daily lives of delinquent boys who are incarcerated in three institutions in French-speaking Belgium. It emphasizes two common denominators: the use of time as a disciplinary method and the observation and humor as symmetric mechanisms. At another level, the question of the sense or nonsense of the incarceration is addressed in relation to the backgrounds of the young inmates and the official missions assigned to these centers. These preliminary results are the result of long-term field work within these institutions.