La prison, école de quoi?

Abstract

Education is generally regarded as one of the important tools at the disposal of the mission of social reintegration entrusted to prisons. Yet, a study of its present reality demonstrates its lack of appeal for the inmates and its institutional fragility. This article proposes different levels of explanation (the socio-demographic profile of the inmates, the conditions of incarceration, the structure of the education schemes and the penitentiary restrictions of the right to education) that raise a number of questions about the limited right to access to education in French prisons and, more broadly, the utopian status of the mission of social reintegration entrusted to the penitentiary institution.