Educating young offenders in penal centers: Reasons for placement at the heart of complex dynamics

While the search for a peaceful social climate is a major challenge in France for the reception, education and/ or rehabilitation of young people in Centre éducatif fermé (CEF), Centre éducatif renforcé (CER) or Centre de placement immédiat (CPI), the approach which consists in welcoming, within the same establishment, people with diverse and varied profiles (ages, backgrounds, reasons for the placement) is far from making it possible to establish such a working environment. Worse still, this practice, driven by educational and reintegrative ideals, ends up encouraging the emergence of conflicts that serve to build both individual and collective identities within these institutions. Actors’ games are constructed and shown, sometimes linking, sometimes opposing, always constraining all the protagonists, whoever they may be (young people, educators, etc.). While individualized care is very often favored as a focal point for analysis, this article proposes to show that it is short-circuited by identity dynamics between peers or groups of peers or games of actors that include the supervisors themselves. Based on life stories, it aims to shed light on how the educational treatment of juvenile delinquency in these centres is constructed in practice.