Inmates’ Participation in Prison Management and its Controversial Institutionalization

This contribution focuses on the institutionalization of prisoner participation in prison management. Based on archives and fieldwork, it describes the rise and fall of the struggle for the right to associate within French prisoner movements as well as its institutional echoes. It also examines the emergence of the recent “inmates’ rights to collective expression” policy experiment, conducted between 2010 and 2011, and how it became a controversial issue within the French prison administration.