Rehabilitation and Punishment. a New Model of Rehabilitation in the French Youth Justice System

According to recent research in policy transfer studies, youth justice systems across the western world are taking a “punitive turn” (Muncie, 2008), marked by the emergence of a new “culture of control” (Garland, 2001). This process is particularly significant in the United States and Great Britain, however it appears that other European countries are following suite (Bailleau & Cartuyvels, 2007). A closer look, however, reveals complexities: the level of youth incarceration, a commonly adopted indicator of punitiveness, differs considerably between countries. The French youth justice system, analyzed in this paper, does not escape these complexities: since 2002, the youth incarceration rate is decreasing, while the content of political discourse and legislative changes seems to fuel the increase of a new punitiveness (Bailleau, 2008). To understand this apparent paradox, we will describe how political injunctions aimed to “get tough” on young offenders, are translated and reworked, at a lower level, through the activity of the administrative agency responsible, in France, for the functioning of youth centers: the Judicial Protection of Youth (JPY). This analysis will allow us to highlight the crystallization of a new model of rehabilitation under constraint. First, using quantitative data, we will describe the increasing use of semi-closed youth facilities as an alternative to prison. Tied to the development of new prisons for youth, supposedly “rehabilitative” (Chantraine & Sallée, 2013), this evolution is changing less the level of confinement than its meaning. Formerly perceived as anti-rehabilitative, confinement is now legitimized as an inseparable feature of rehabilitative processes. Second, we will analyze knowledge production practices, particularly child psychiatric and psychological knowledge, mobilized by the JPY to support this legitimation process. This paper will defend the idea that this new knowledge underpins old disciplinary recipes, and symbolizes the growing concern surrounding, in France, the institutional fabric of socialized individuals.