Academic literature on the topic 'Prisons – Conception et construction – Cinéma'

Cet article propose de retracer, grâce à une analyse de l’imaginaire fictionnel des films de fiction cubains, l’évolution de la définition du Nous cubain, à partir de la Révolution cubaine en 1959 jusqu’au début des années 2000. Marquée au début par une frontière nette entre le Nous et les Autres, fondée sur une opposition idéologique doublée par une séparation géographique, le concept du Nous a été remis en question d’abord avec l’arrivée des nouvelles générations nées au sein même du Nous révolutionnaire et ensuite avec les bouleversements provoqués par l’ébranlement de l’Union soviétique. Dans les intrigues fictionnelles, la possibilité de reprendre contact avec la famille à l’extérieur de Cuba et les nouvelles données migratoires stimulent les protagonistes à se concentrer sur les références communes qui leur permettent de se sentir proches malgré la distance géographique. Ainsi, la frontière délimitant le Nous à partir de critères idéologiques perd son importance au profit d’une conception d’un Nous cubain plus ouvert et dynamique, fondé davantage sur un sentiment d’appartenance culturelle et affective.

Cet article met à l’épreuve des faits, l’analyse la plus courante de «la prison victorienne», à savoir un ensemble immuable et incontesté de pratiques et de discours punitifs, ayant pour corollaire l’établissement d’édifices carcéraux imposants, tels que ceux de Pentonville, Reading ou Dartmoor. Cette conception, associée aux influents travaux de l’historien Michael Ignatieff, voit dans le «penitentiary» l’avènement d’un nouveau paradigme, approuvé officiellement dans les premières décennies du XIXe siècle, et dominant la politique pénale pour le reste du siècle. Si l’on prend l’exemple de Millbank, premier «penitentiary» pour forçats édifié en 1816, la réalité semble toutefois bien différente. Les réformateurs de prison durent déployer beaucoup d’efforts pour se faire entendre dans le marché très concurrentiel de la politique pénale, et ce avec un succès souvent mitigé. Lorsqu’ils réussirent à mettre en œuvre leurs idées nouvelles, notamment dans la construction et la gestion des prisons, leur politique, loin de faire l’unanimité, fut accompagnée de controverses et accusée d’échec. Même la prison de Pentonville (1842), souvent considérée comme le fleuron du régime pénitentiaire britannique, n’échappa pas à ce destin.

From the mid-twentieth century, state and public conceptions of deviance and crime control have turned increasingly punitive (Hallett 115; Hutchinson 138). In a Western context, criminal justice has long been retributive, prioritising punishment over rehabilitation (Wenzel et al. 26). Within that context, there has been an increase in punitiveness—understood here as a measure of a punishment’s severity—the intention of which has been to help restore the moral imbalance created by offending while also deterring future crime (Wenzel et al. 26). Entangled with the global spread of neoliberal capitalism, punitiveness has become internationally pervasive to a near-hegemonic degree (Sparks qtd. in Jennings et al. 463; Unnever and Cullen 100).The punitive turn has troubling characteristics. Punitive policies can be expensive, and increased incarceration stresses the criminal justice system and leads to prison overcrowding (Hutchinson 135). Further, punitiveness is not only applied unequally across categories such as class, race, and age (Unnever and Cullen 105-06; Wacquant 212) but the effectiveness of punitive policy relative to its costs is contested (Bouffard et al. 466, 477; Hutchinson 139). Despite this, evidence suggests public demand is driving punitive policymaking, but that demand is only weakly related to crime rates (Jennings et al. 463).While discussion of punitiveness in the public sphere often focuses on measures such as boot camps for young offenders, increased incarceration, and longer prison sentences, punitiveness also has a darker side. Our research analysing discussion taking place on a large, regional, crime-focused online forum reveals a startling degree and intensity of violence directed at offenders and related groups. Members of the discussion forum do propose unsurprising measures such as incarceration and boot camps, but also an array of violent alternatives, including beating, shooting, dismemberment, and conversion into animal food. This article draws on our research to explore why discussion of punitiveness can be so intensely violent.Our research applies thematic analysis to seven discussion threads posted to a large regional online forum focused on crime, made between September and November 2017. One discussion thread per week of the study period was purposively sampled based on relevance to the topic of punitiveness, ultimately yielding 1200 individual comments. Those comments were coded, and the data and codes were reiteratively analysed to produce categories, then basic, organising, and global themes. We intended to uncover themes in group discussion most salient to punitiveness to gain insight into how punitive social interactions unfold and how those who demand punitiveness understand their interactions and experiences of crime. We argue that, in this online forum, the global theme—the most salient concept related to punitiveness—is a “subaltern citizenship”. Here, a clear division emerges from the data, where the group members perceive themselves as “us”—legitimate citizens with all attendant rights—in opposition to an external “them”, a besieging group of diverse, marginalised Others who have illegitimately usurped certain rights and who victimise citizens. Group members often deride the state as too weak and untrustworthy to stop this victimisation. Ironically, the external Others perceived by the group to hold power are themselves genuinely marginalised, though the group does not recognise or see that form of marginalisation as legitimate. In this essay, to preserve the anonymity of the forum and its members, we refer to them only as “the Forum”, located in “the City”, and refrain from direct quotes except for commonly used words or phrases that do not identify individuals.It is also important to note that the research described here deliberately focused on a specific group in a specific space who were concerned about specific groups of offenders. Findings and discussion, and the views on punitiveness described, cannot be generalised to the broader community. Nor do we suggest these views can be considered representative of all Forum members as we present here only a limited analysis of some violent discourse emerging from our research. Likewise, while our discussion often centres on youth and other marginalised groups in the context of offending, we do not intend to imply that offending is a characteristic of these groups.Legitimate CitizenshipCommonly, citizenship is seen as a conferred status denoting full and equal community membership and the rights and responsibilities dictated by community values and norms (Lister 28-29). Western citizenship norms are informed by neoliberal capitalist values: individual responsibility, an obligation to be in paid employment, participation in economic consumption, the sanctity of ownership, and that the principal role of government is to defend the conditions under which these norms can freely thrive (Walsh 861-62). While norms are shaped by laws and policy frameworks, they are not imposed coercively or always deployed consciously. These norms exist as shared behavioural expectations reproduced through social interaction and embodied as “common sense” (Kotzian 59). As much as Western democracies tend to a universalist representation of one, undifferentiated citizenship, it is clear that gender, race, sexual orientation, religion, ethnicity, and migrant status all exist in different relationships to citizenship as an identity category. Glass ceilings, stolen generations, same-sex marriage debates, and Australian Government proposals to strip citizenship from certain types of criminal offender all demonstrate that the lived experience of norms surrounding citizenship is profoundly unequal for some (Staeheli et al. 629-30). An individual’s citizenship status, therefore, more accurately exists on a spectrum between legitimacy—full community membership, possessing all rights and living up to all associated responsibilities—and illegitimacy—diminished membership, with contested rights and questionable fulfilment of associated responsibilities—depending on the extent of their deviation from societal norms.Discussing punitiveness, Forum members position themselves as “us”, that is, legitimate citizens. Words such as “we” and “us” are used as synonyms for society and for those whose behaviours are “normal” or “acceptable”. Groups associated with offending are described as “they”, “them”, and their behaviours are “not normal”, “disgusting”, “feral”, and merit the removal of “them” from civilisation, usually to “the middle of nowhere” or “the Outback”. Possession of legitimate citizenship is implicit in assuming authority over what is normal and who should be exiled for failing the standard.Another implicit assumption discernible in the data is that Forum members perceive the “normal we” as good neoliberal citizens. “We” work hard, own homes and cars, and take individual responsibility. There is a strong imputation of welfare dependency among offenders, the poor, and other suspect groups. Offending is presented as something curable by stripping offenders or their parents of welfare payments. Members earn their status as legitimate citizens by adhering to the norms of neoliberal citizenship in opposition to potential offenders to whom the benefits of citizenship are simply doled out.Forum members also frame their citizenship as legitimate by asserting ownership over community spaces and resources. This can be seen in their talking as if they, their sympathetic audience, and “the City” are the same (for example, declaring that “the City” demands harsher punishments for juvenile offenders). There are also calls to “take back” the streets, the City, and Australia from groups associated with offending. That a space can and should be “taken back” implies a pre-existing state of control interrupted by those who have no right to ownership. At its most extreme, the assertion of ownership extends to a conviction that members have the right to position offenders as enemies of the state and request that the army, the ultimate tool of legitimate state violence, be turned against them if governments and the criminal justice system are too “weak” or “soft” to constrain them.The Illegitimate OtherThroughout the data, perceived offenders are spoken of with scorn and hatred. “Perceived offenders” may include offenders and their family, youths, Indigenous people, and people of low socioeconomic status, and these marginalised groups are referenced so interchangeably it can be difficult to determine which is being discussed.Commenting on four “atsi [sic] kids” who assaulted an elderly man, group members asserted “they” should be shot like dogs. The original text gives no antecedents to indicate whether “they” is meant to indicate youths, Indigenous youths, or offenders in general. However, Australia has a colonial history of conflating crime and indigeneity and shooting Indigenous people to preserve white social order (Hill and Dawes 310, 312), a consequence of the tendency of white people to imagine criminals as black (Unnever and Cullen 106). It must be noted that the racial identity of individual Forum members is unknown. This does constitute a limitation in the original study, as identity categories such as race and class intersect and manifest in social interactions in complex ways. However, that does not prevent analysis of the text itself.In the Forum’s discursive space, “they” is used to denote offenders, Indigenous youths, youths, or the poor interchangeably, as if they were all a homogeneous, mutually synonymous “Other”. Collectively, these groups are represented as so generally hopeless that they are imagined as choosing to offend so they will be sentenced to the comforts of “holiday camp” prisons where they can access luxuries otherwise beyond their reach: freedom from addicted parents, medical care, food, television, and computers. A common argument, that crime is an individual choice, is often based on the idea that prison is a better option for the poor than going home. As a result, offending by marginalised offenders is reconstructed as a rational choice or a failure of individual responsibility rather than a consequence of structural inequality.Further, parents of those in suspect populations are blamed for intergenerational maintenance of criminality. They are described as too drunk or drugged to care, too unskilled in parenting due to their presumed dreadful upbringing, or too busy enjoying their welfare payments to meet their responsibility to control their children or teach them the values and skills of citizenship. Comments imply parents probably participated in their children’s crimes even when no evidence suggests that possibility and that some groups simply cannot be trusted to raise disciplined children owing to their inherent moral and economic dissipation. That is, not just offenders but entire groups are deemed illegitimate, willing to enjoy benefits of citizenship such as welfare payments but unwilling or unable to earn them by engaging with the associated responsibilities. This is a frequent argument for why they deserve severely punitive punishment for deviance.However, the construction of the Other as illegitimate in Forum discussions reaches far beyond imagining them as lacking normative skills and values. The violence present on the Forum is startling in its intensity. Prevalent within the data is the reduction of people to insulting nicknames. Terms used to describe people range from the sarcastic— “little darlings”—through standard abusive language such as “bastards”, “shits”, “dickheads”, “lowlifes”, to dehumanising epithets such as “maggots”, “scum”, and “subhuman arsewipes”. Individually and collectively, “they” are relentlessly framed as less than human and even less than animals. They are “mongrels” and “vermin”. In groups, they are “packs”, and they deserve to be “hunted” or just shot from helicopters. They are unworthy of life. “Oxygen thieves” is a repeated epithet, as is the idea that they should be dropped out at sea to drown. Other suggestions for punishment include firing squads, lethal injections, and feeding them to animals.It is difficult to imagine a more definitive denial of legitimacy than discursively stripping individuals and groups of their humanity (their most fundamental status) and their right to existence (their most fundamental right as living beings). The Forum comes perilously close to casting the Other as Agamben’s homo sacer, humans who live in a “state of exception”, subject to the state’s power but excluded from the law’s protection and able to be killed without consequence (Lechte and Newman 524). While it would be hyperbole to push this comparison too far—given Agamben had concentration camps in mind—the state of exception as a means of both excluding a group from society and exercising control over its life does resonate here.Themes Underlying PunitivenessOur findings indicate the theme most salient to punitive discussion is citizenship, rooted in persistent concerns over who is perceived to have it, who is not, and what should be done about those Others whose deviance renders their citizenship less legitimate. Citizenship norms—real or aspirational—of society’s dominant groups constitute the standards by which Forum members judge their experiences of and with crime, perceived offenders, the criminal justice system, and the state. However, Forum members do not claim a straightforward belonging to and sharing in the maintenance of the polity. Analysis of the data suggests Forum members consider their legitimate citizenship tainted by external forces such as politics, untrustworthy authorities and institutions, and the unconstrained excess of the illegitimate Other. That is, they perceive their citizenship to be simultaneously legitimate and undeservedly subaltern.According to Gramsci, subaltern populations are subordinate to dominant groups in political and civil society, lulled by hegemonic norms to cooperate in their own oppression (Green 2). Civil society supports the authority of political society and, in return, political society uses the law and criminal justice system to safeguard civil society’s interests against unruly subalterns (Green 7). Rights and responsibilities of citizenship reside within the mutual relationship between political and civil society. Subalternity, by definition, exists outside this relationship, or with limited access to it.Forum members position themselves as citizens within civil society. They lay emphatic claim to fulfilling their responsibilities as neoliberal citizens. However, they perceive themselves to be denied the commensurate rights: they cannot rely on the criminal justice system to protect them from the illegitimate Other. The courts are “soft”, and prisons are “camps” with “revolving doors”. Authorities pamper offenders while doing nothing to stop them from hurting their victims. Human rights are viewed as an imposition by the UN or as policy flowing from a political sphere lacking integrity and dominated by “do gooders”. Rights are reserved only for offenders. Legitimate citizens no longer even have the right to defend themselves. The perceived result is a transfer of rights from legitimate to illegitimate, from deserving to undeserving. This process elides from view the actual subalterns of Australian society—here, most particularly Indigenous people and the socioeconomically vulnerable—and reconstructs them as oppressors of the dominant group, who are reframed as legitimate citizens unjustly made subaltern.The Violence in PunitivenessOn the Forum, as in the broader world, a sense of “white victimisation”—the view, unsupported by history or evidence, that whites are an oppressed people within a structure systematically doling out advantage to minorities (King 89)—is a recurrent legitimising argument for punitiveness and vigilantism. Amid the shrinking social safety nets and employment precarity of neoliberal capitalism, competitiveness increases, and white identity forms around perceived threats to power and status incurred by “losing out” to minorities (Sacks and Lindholm 131). One 2011 study finds a majority of white US citizens believe themselves subject to more racism than black people (King 89). However, these assumptions of whiteness tend to be spared critical examination because, in white-dominated societies, whiteness is the common-sense norm in opposition to which other racial categories are defined (Petray and Collin 2). When whiteness is made the focus of critical questioning, white identities gain salience and imaginings of the “dark other” and besieged white virtues intensify (Bonilla-Silva et al. 232).With respect to feelings of punitiveness, Unnever and Cullen (118-19) find that the social cause for punitiveness in the United States is hostility towards other races, that harsh punishments, including the death penalty, are demanded and accepted by the dominant group because they are perceived to mostly injure “people they do not like” (Unnever and Cullen 119). Moreover, perception that a racial group is inherently criminal amplifies more generalised prejudices against them and diminishes the capacity of the dominant group to feel empathy for suffering inflicted upon them by the criminal justice system (Unnever and Cullen 120).While our analysis of the Forum supports these findings where they touch on crimes committed by Indigenous people, they invite a question. Why, where race is not a factor, do youths and the socioeconomically disadvantaged also inspire intensely violent punitiveness as described above? We argue that the answer relates to status. From this perspective, race becomes one of several categories of differentiation from legitimate citizenship through an ascription of low status.Wenzel, Okimoto, and Cameron (29) contend punitiveness, with respect to specific offences, varies according to the symbolic meaning the offence holds for the observer. Crimes understood as a transgression against status or power inspire a need for “revenge, punishment, and stigmatisation” (Wenzel et al. 41) and justify an increase in the punitiveness required (Wenzel et al. 29, 34). This is particularly true where an offence is deemed to make someone unfit for community membership, such that severe punishment serves as a symbolic marker of exile and a reaffirmation for the community of the violated values and norms (Wenzel et al. 41). Indeed, as noted, Forum posts regularly call for offenders to be removed from society, exiled to the outback, or shipped beyond Australia’s territorial waters.Further, Forum members’ perception of subaltern citizenship, with its assumption of legitimate citizenship as being threatened by undeserving Others, makes them view crime as implicitly a matter of status transgression. This is intensified by perception that the political sphere and criminal justice system are failing legitimate citizens, refusing even to let them defend themselves. Virulent name-calling and comparisons to animals can be understood as attempts by the group to symbolically curtail the undeservedly higher status granted to offenders by weak governments and courts. More violent demands for punishment symbolically remove offenders from citizenship, reaffirm citizen values, and vent anger at a political and criminal justice system deemed complicit, through weakness, in reducing legitimate citizens to subaltern citizens.ConclusionsIn this essay, we highlight the extreme violence we found in our analysis of an extensive online crime forum in a regional Australian city. We explore some explanations for violent public punitiveness, highlighting how members identify themselves as subaltern citizens in a battle against undeserving Others, with no support from a weak state. This analysis centres community norms and a problematic conception of citizenship as drivers of both public punitiveness and dissatisfaction with crime control policy and the criminal justice system. We highlight a real dissonance between community needs and public policy that may undermine effective policymaking. That is, evidence-based crime control policies, successful crime prevention initiatives, and falling crime rates may not increase public satisfaction with how crime is dealt with if policymakers pursue those measures without regard for how citizens experience the process.While studies such as that by Wenzel, Okimoto, and Cameron identify differences in status between legitimate citizens and offenders as amplifiers of punitiveness, we suggest the amplification may be mediated by the status relationship between legitimate citizens and authority figures within legitimate society. The offender and their crime may not contribute as much to the public’s outrage as commonly assumed. Instead, public punitiveness may predominantly arise from the perception that the political sphere, media, and criminal justice system respond to citizens’ experience of crime in ways that devalue the status of legitimate citizens. At least in the context of this regional city, this points to something other than successful crime control being integral to building more effective and satisfactory crime control policy: in this case, the need to rebuild trust between citizens and authority groups.ReferencesBonilla-Silva, Eduardo, Carla Goar, and David G. Embrick. “When Whites Flock Together: The Social Psychology of White Habitus.” Critical Sociology 32.2-3 (2006): 229–253.Bouffard, Jeff, Maisha Cooper, and Kathleen Bergseth. “The Effectiveness of Various Restorative Justice Interventions on Recidivism Outcomes among Juvenile Offenders.” Youth Violence and Juvenile Justice 15.4 (2017): 465–480.Green, Marcus. “Gramsci Cannot Speak: Presentations and Interpretations of Gramsci’s Concept of the Subaltern.” Rethinking Marxism 14.3 (2002): 1–24.Hallett, Michael. “Imagining the Global Corporate Gulag: Lessons from History and Criminological Theory.” Contemporary Justice Review 12.2 (2009): 113–127.Hill, Richard, and Glenn Dawes. “The ‘Thin White Line’: Juvenile Crime, Racialised Narrative and Vigilantism—A North Queensland Study.” Current Issues in Criminal Justice 11.3 (2000): 308–326.Hutchinson, Terry. “‘A Slap on the Wrist’? The Conservative Agenda in Queensland, Australia.” Youth Justice 15.2 (2015): 134–147.Jennings, Will, Stephen Farrall, Emily Gray, and Colin Hay. “Penal Populism and the Public Thermostat: Crime, Public Punitiveness, and Public Policy.” Governance: An International Journal of Policy, Administration, and Institutions 30.3 (2017): 463–481.King, Mike. “The ‘Knockout Game’: Moral Panic and the Politics of White Victimhood.” Race & Class 56.4 (2015): 85–94.Kotzian, Peter. “Good Governance and Norms of Citizenship: An Investigation into the System- and Individual-Level Determinants of Attachment to Civic Norms.” American Journal of Economics and Sociology 73.1 (2014): 58–83.Lechte, John, and Saul Newman. “Agamben, Arendt and Human Rights: Bearing Witness to the Human.” European Journal of Social Theory 15.4 (2012): 522–536.Lister, Ruth. “Citizenship: Towards a Feminist Synthesis.” Feminist Review 57 (1997): 28–48.Petray, Theresa L., and Rowan Collin. “Your Privilege is Trending: Confronting Whiteness on Social Media.” Social Media + Society 3.2 (2017): 1–10.Sacks, Michael A., and Marika Lindholm. “A Room without a View: Social Distance and the Structuring of Privileged Identity.” Working through Whiteness: International Perspectives. Ed. Cynthia Levine-Rasky. Albany, NY: State U of New York P, 2002. 129-151.Staeheli, Lynn A., Patricia Ehrkamp, Helga Leitner, and Caroline R. Nagel. “Dreaming the Ordinary: Daily Life and the Complex Geographies of Citizenship.” Progress in Human Geography 36.5 (2012): 628–644.Unnever, James D., and Francis T. Cullen. “The Social Sources of Americans’ Punitiveness: A Test of Three Competing Models.” Criminology 48.1 (2010): 99–129.Wacquant, Loïc. “Crafting the Neoliberal State: Workfare, Prisonfare, and Social Insecurity.” Sociological Forum 25.2 (2010): 197–220.Walsh, James P. “Quantifying Citizens: Neoliberal Restructuring and Immigrant Selection in Canada and Australia.” Citizenship Studies 15.6-7 (2011): 861–879.Wenzel, Michael, Tyler Okimoto, and Kate Cameron. “Do Retributive and Restorative Justice Processes Address Different Symbolic Concerns?” Critical Criminology 20.1 (2012): 25–44.

De 1964 à 2002, les films de Jean-Daniel Pollet n’ont cessé d’accompagner et de nourrir la pratique cinématographique du cinéaste Alain Moreau, le conduisant à inventer des dispositifs qui proposent, à l’instar des films Méditerranée et L’Ordre, des configurations inédites du rapport des spectateurs et des acteurs à l’image, au monde, au réel. Films dédiés à l’architecture, émissions pensées depuis la prison, il s’agit de « résister à l’image », d’ouvrir des brèches, de rendre possible un rapport « archaïque » à l’espace et au temps, à travers des blocs d’espace-temps, projet qui rencontre celui que j’avais nommé « ciné-topies ». Partant d’une réflexion sur mon propre cheminement j’en suis venue à reconstituer la genèse de l’œuvre cinématographique d’Alain Moreau. Travail de longue haleine, travail de reconstitution d’archives dont rend compte le volume de transcriptions et d’annexes qui accompagnent le texte de la thèse. Travail d’archiviste mais aussi d’interprétation fondé sur mes questions et mes lectures théoriques : la « ciné-architecture » d’Alain Moreau m’a conduite à mettre à l’épreuve l’image de l’archipel, qui me paraissait rendre compte de ma propre pratique autant que de la sienne : rapport à un réel archaïque, à partir duquel construire une multiplicité de rapports au monde, en-deçà ou au-delà de l’image. L’idée d’archipel me venant de Glissant, de Deleuze et de Melville se chargeait d’une autre complexité : l’archipel, paradigme souvent convoqué par la pensée contemporaine comme ouverture au multiple et à l’altérité, est aussi ce qui permet à Foucault de penser l’espace carcéral comme forme moderne de la discipline. Comment penser l’ambivalence de cette idée ? Comment à partir de là repenser les enjeux politiques des ciné-topies ?
From 1964 to 2002, Jean-Daniel Pollet's films continued to accompany and nourish the cinematographic practice of Alain Moreau, leading him to invent devices that propose, in the manner of the films Méditerranée and L'Ordre, unprecedented configurations of the relationship of spectators and actors to the image, to the world, to reality. Films dedicated to architecture, programs conceived from within prison, it is about "resisting the image", opening rifts, making possible an "archaic" relationship to space and time, through blocks of space-time, a project that meets the one I named "cine-topies".Beginning from a reflection on my own path, I came to reconstruct the genesis of Alain Moreau's cinematographic work. A long-term endeavor, involving archival reconstruction work as reflected by the volume of transcripts and appendices that accompany the text of the thesis. Archival work, but also an interpretation based on my questions and my theoretical readings: Alain Moreau's "cine-architecture" led me to test the image of the archipelago, which seemed to me to reflect as much my practice as his own: the relationship to an archaic reality, from which to build a multiplicity of links to the world, below or beyond the image.My idea of an archipelago, originating from Glissant, Deleuze and Melville, acquired additional complexity: the archipelago, a paradigm often summoned by contemporary thought as an opening to multiple and otherness, is also that which allows Foucault to think of prison space as a modern form of discipline. How can one consider the ambivalence of this idea? How can one then rethink the political stakes of cine-topies?

Ce travail de thèse a pour objet, l'étude d'une architecture à la fois mythique et réelle : la prison. Il a pour teneur générale l'exploration d'un espace construit ancré dans la culture française, faisant l'objet de nombreuses controverses et débats, et qui pourtant se caractérise par un profond désintéressement pour son architecture contemporaine. Ce travail vise donc à ré- instituer une réflexion sur l'architecture carcérale vecteur de la violence légitime de l'État mais aussi, et surtout, espace de vie et de travail. Cette exploration s'organise autour de deux démarches fondatrices. La première trace les contours des tenants et des aboutissants de l'architecture carcérale. L'architecture, comprise comme la production d'une société à un moment donné, est posée relativement aux différentes préoccupations qui touchent à la prison, à ses enjeux propres et ses modalités d'édification. La seconde développe une approche plus spécifique de l'architecture comprise comme cadre de vie et de travail. Elle est donc axée sur l'analyse de l'usage et de l'expérience d'un espace autre qu'est celui d'une peine de justice, de la privation de liberté et de la contrainte du corps. L'objet de recherche touche donc spécifiquement à la place de l'architecture dans le vécu, par les détenus et les surveillants, de l'espace carcéral en relation à son contexte spécifique
This thesis aims, the study of an architecture, both mythical and real: the prison. Its general tenor exploration of a built-rooted in French culture, the subject of much controversy and debate, and yet is characterized by a profound disinterest in contemporary architecture. This work aims to reinstate a reflection on prison architecture vector of legitimate violence of the state but also, and above all, living and working space. This exploration is organized around two founding approaches. The first traces the boundaries of the in and out of prison architecture. The architecture, understood as the production of a society at a given time, is posed in relation to the various concerns affecting the prison, its challenges and its own rules for construction. The second develops a more specific architecture understood as a living and work. It is based on the analysis of the use and experience what a space other than a sentence of justice, deprivation of liberty and coercion of the body. The purpose of research involves so specifically to the place of architecture in the experience, by inmates and guards, the prison space in relation to its specific context

Qu'est-ce qui amène un pays, à un moment donné de son histoire, à faire le choix d'augmenter la taille de son parc pénitentiaire, de mener une « politique des murs » ? Pour répondre à cette question, nous comparons deux pays qui ont suivi des voies différentes : le Canada et la France. S'il a souvent été affirmé dans la littérature des sciences sociales que la décision de construire des prisons relevait de circonstances politiques, peu de travaux l'ont prouvé, et notre thèse entend commencer à combler cette lacune. En nous appuyant sur la sociologie de la décision, nous avons analysé les structures qui donnent naissance aux réformes touchant à la prison, l'action des acteurs impliqués, leur participation à l'élaboration de référentiels de politique pénale, et la façon dont s'organisait la circulation des idées dans les milieux décisionnels. Combinant observation des chiffres des prisons, travail archivistique, consultation de la littérature grise de la politique pénale de 1980 à 2005, et entretiens semi-directifs auprès de responsables politico-administratifs des deux pays (et à plusieurs niveaux de gouvernement dans le cas du Canada), nous avons cherché à expliciter les représentations qui guidaient les acteurs dans la définition du contenu programmatique d'une politique pénale. Le type de problème sélectionné par les responsables politico-administratifs, la place de la sécurité à l'agenda politique, et la participation d'administrateurs dénués de préoccupations électoralistes à la formulation des énoncés de solution sont les principaux facteurs explicatifs de la taille du parc carcéral. In fine, la composition des milieux décisionnels, de même que la propension des élites à intégrer d'autres catégories d'acteurs (groupes d'intérêts, consultants et universitaires) suffisamment institutionnalisées pour influencer l'élaboration des référentiels d'action publique, auront permis d'expliquer les écarts dans les politiques de construction menées dans les deux pays
What is it that drives a country, at some point in history, to make a choice to increase its custodial capacity and to realise a ‘policy of walls'? To answer this question, this thesis develops a comparison between two countries which, in this respect, have followed very different paths: Canada and France. Although it is often claimed in social science literature that the decision to build prisons was a response to specific political circumstances, very few studies have documented empirically the interplay between the policy-makers responsible and the institutional framework within which such choices were determined. This thesis aims to begin to eliminate this lacuna. Drawing on the sociology of decision-making, we have conducted analyses of the structures underlying prison reforms and scrutinized the actions of those members of the political class involved in the process, including the variety of policy advisers involved in the formulation of penal policy. Particular attention has been drawn on the circulation of ideas in decision-making milieux. Drawing on a combination of penal statistics, institutional archives, ‘Grey Literature' in penal policy from 1980 to 2005, as well as semi-structured interviews conducted with public officials from both countries (and at both levels of government in the case of Canada), the thesis highlights the views those involved in the implementation of reforms to the criminal justice system referred to when establishing specific penal policies' programmatic content. The type of problems defined by public officials, the role played by public safety issues in the political culture of both countries and openness to delegating solutions to reform-minded civil servants mostly account for changes in prison capacity. Finally, it is contended that it was the composition of the decision-making milieux taken together with the propensity of elites to absorb participants from differentiated sub-sectors (interests groups, consultants, academics, etc.) that are sufficiently institutionalized to influence the decision-making process), that explains the differences in prison building policies between the two countries

La prison est une peine géographique : elle punit des populations détenues en les tenant à distance de leurs proches et en les confinant dans des lieux clos et segmentés. En même temps, le dispositif spatial de la prison cherche à réinsérer le détenu dans la cité, à maintenir ses liens familiaux. D'où un jeu entre distances et proximités, continuités et discontinuités. L'étude de la carte pénitentiaire française montre diverses formes de mise à distance des détenus. En dépit de proximités avérées entre la plupart des prisons et les bassins de population ou les voies de communication, les détenus et leurs proches vivent l'incarcération comme une mise à l'écart. Ces distanciations s'accroissent au niveau local : les élus et les riverains interrogés souhaitent souvent éloigner les nuisances des prisons, voire cacher le stigmate carcéral – d'où la délicate insertion des établissements dans leur « territoire d'accueil ». L'espace architectural des prisons accentue cette obsession séparatrice : démarquer le dedans du dehors et séparer les détenus entre eux. Une trentaine d'entretiens sur le vécu de l'espace carcéral menés dans cinq établissements confirme la force de la discontinuité dedans/dehors, mais nuance les discontinuités internes. Certains détenus arrivent à circuler dans la prison, beaucoup moins à s'approprier un espace garantissant sécurité, intimité ou vie sociale. La prison se présente donc comme un dispositif de séparation, plus que de relégation : elle coupe les détenus de leurs proches et les empêche de partager un espace commun entre les murs. Cette thèse invite ainsi à repenser les géographies de l'exclusion plus en termes de discontinuités que de distances.

Aboutissement d'un mouvement réformateur initié depuis le milieu du XVIIIe siècle, l'avènement de la prison pour peine après la Révolution française, entraîne une redéfinition de l'architecture carcérale, dès lors érigée en programme architectural autonome. A travers l'exemple des prisons successivement aménagées et édifiées à Paris et dans le département de la Seine au XIXe siècle, qu'il s'agisse de bâtiments réaffectés ou de constructions ex nihilo, la présente étude s'intéresse à l'évolution des formes au regard des ajustements opérés sur la période en matière de politique pénale et de régime d'enfermement. Placés sous les yeux des décideurs, visités sans relâche, les établissements pénitentiaires de la capitale représentent en effet un formidable laboratoire d'expérimentations préalables à une généralisation à l'échelle nationale. L'analyse est centrée sur le travail de l'architecte constructeur de prison et s'articule, après une présentation détaillée du cadre administratif et des procédures, autour des contraintes fortes et multiples, parfois contradictoires, du programme. Puisque la prison, ville dans la ville, entreprend de reproduire derrière des murs tous les aspects de la vie quotidienne d'un grand nombre d'individus, il s'agit de voir comment l'architecture pénitentiaire met en jeu et tente de plier à ses contraintes propres presque l'ensemble des typologies architecturales communes, du logement à l'atelier, de l'hôpital à l'église, de l'école à la caserne, représentant un véritable défi pour l'architecte. Au-delà de la simple étude de cas, cette thèse se veut ainsi un matériau pour une future histoire générale de l'architecture pénitentiaire en France
In the wake of a reformatory drive initiated back in the middle of the 18th century, prisons erected after the French Revolution are the results of a redefinition of prison architecture, henceforth a fully fledged architectural programme in its own right. Taking as an example the prisons successively fitted our or built in Paris and in the Seine department in the 19th century, wether reset or built from scratch, the present study deals with the history of designs as a result of the development of penal policies during that period and with regard to confinement regulations. Under the vigilant gaze of decison markers, and regularly inspected, the penitentiary institutions in the capital city represent an outstanding laboratory for experimenting the measures to be later implemented nationwide. This analysis concentrates on the work of the architect responsible for building prisons ; it starts out with a detailed presentation of the administrative framework and procedures centered around the strong and sometimes contradictory requirements of the programme. Since a prison a town within the town, undertakes to reproduce behind its walls all the aspects of the daily life of a large number of individuals, the challenge for prison architecture and architects consists in using and trying to fit to its own constraint practically all common architectural typologies, from lodgins to workshop, from hospitals to church, from school to barracks. Beyond a simple case study, the present thesis is designed to inform a future general history of prison architecture in France

On sait bien peu de choses sur la prison parisienne du XVIIIe siècle. Si les historiens ont été fascinés par le pénitencier du XIXe, ils ont largement négligé la geôle d’Ancien Régime. La période n’a pas été entièrement ignorée, bien sûr : elle voit naître les écrits de Beccaria qui remettent en cause le régime des supplices et qui mettent en branle la réforme pénale. C’est aussi le temps du Grand Renfermement des pauvres et des asociaux dont l’Hôpital général et le dépôt de mendicité sont les plus nettes matérialisations. Mais, là encore, la prison, qui faisait pourtant partie intégrante de la procédure judiciaire de l’époque, a été écartée. Le présent travail vise à combler une partie de cette béance en explorant le monde de la prison prépénale dans le Paris du XVIIIe siècle. Bien loin de constituer un objet isolé, cette geôle ordinaire doit être intégrée à part entière dans l’histoire carcérale, celle-là même qui mène jusqu’au pénitencier.La démonstration s’articule en trois grandes parties entre lesquelles les liens sont nombreux. La première prend pour assise la structure de la prison : sa charpente, ses bâtiments, sa constitution matérielle. Elle aborde les établissements d’enfermement d’abord et avant tout comme des objets tangibles et concrets. La seconde partie quitte la structure de la prison parisienne pour plonger dans ses circuits financiers. Il s’agit d’explorer deux grandes questions : d’où vient l’argent et où va-t-il? Finalement, la troisième partie pénètre plus en profondeur le monde carcéral en ciblant les hommes qui la composent: la prison est aussi faite de relations
We know very little about the Parisian prison of the XVIIIth century. Historians have been fascinated by the XIXth century penitentiary but they have largely neglected the Ancien Régime prison. The period was not entirely ignored, of course: it sees the birth of Beccaria's writings which question the relevance of physical punishment and set in motion the penal reform. It's also the time of the Grand Renfermement of paupers and asocials, of which the Hôpital général and the dépôt de mendicité are the clearest incarnations. However, the prison, which was an integral part of the judicial procedure, was discarded. The present research aims to fill a part of this gap by exploring the world of prepenal prison in XVIIIth century Paris. Far from forming an isolated object, this Ancien Régime jail must be fully integrated in the history of prisons which leads all the way to the penitentiary.The demonstration is articulated in three parts between which the links are numerous. The first takes as its basis the structure of the prison, its framework, its buildings, its material constitution. It addresses the detention facilities first and foremost as tangible and concrete objects. The second part leaves the structure of the Parisian prison to dive into its financial circuits. It explores two large questions: where does the money come from and where does it go? Finally, the third part penetrates even deeper in the prison world by targeting the men who compose it. The prison, after all, is made up of human relations

On sait bien peu de choses sur la prison parisienne du XVIIIe siècle. Si les historiens ont été fascinés par le pénitencier du XIXe, ils ont largement négligé la geôle d’Ancien Régime. La période n’a pas été entièrement ignorée, bien sûr : elle voit naître les écrits de Beccaria qui remettent en cause le régime des supplices et qui mettent en branle la réforme pénale. C’est aussi le temps du Grand Renfermement des pauvres et des asociaux dont l’Hôpital général et le dépôt de mendicité sont les plus nettes matérialisations. Mais, là encore, la prison, qui faisait pourtant partie intégrante de la procédure judiciaire de l’époque, a été écartée. Le présent travail vise à combler une partie de cette béance en explorant le monde de la prison prépénale dans le Paris du XVIIIe siècle. Bien loin de constituer un objet isolé, cette geôle ordinaire doit être intégrée à part entière dans l’histoire carcérale, celle-là même qui mène jusqu’au pénitencier.La démonstration s’articule en trois grandes parties entre lesquelles les liens sont nombreux. La première prend pour assise la structure de la prison : sa charpente, ses bâtiments, sa constitution matérielle. Elle aborde les établissements d’enfermement d’abord et avant tout comme des objets tangibles et concrets. La seconde partie quitte la structure de la prison parisienne pour plonger dans ses circuits financiers. Il s’agit d’explorer deux grandes questions : d’où vient l’argent et où va-t-il? Finalement, la troisième partie pénètre plus en profondeur le monde carcéral en ciblant les hommes qui la composent: la prison est aussi faite de relations
We know very little about the Parisian prison of the XVIIIth century. Historians have been fascinated by the XIXth century penitentiary but they have largely neglected the Ancien Régime prison. The period was not entirely ignored, of course: it sees the birth of Beccaria's writings which question the relevance of physical punishment and set in motion the penal reform. It's also the time of the Grand Renfermement of paupers and asocials, of which the Hôpital général and the dépôt de mendicité are the clearest incarnations. However, the prison, which was an integral part of the judicial procedure, was discarded. The present research aims to fill a part of this gap by exploring the world of prepenal prison in XVIIIth century Paris. Far from forming an isolated object, this Ancien Régime jail must be fully integrated in the history of prisons which leads all the way to the penitentiary.The demonstration is articulated in three parts between which the links are numerous. The first takes as its basis the structure of the prison, its framework, its buildings, its material constitution. It addresses the detention facilities first and foremost as tangible and concrete objects. The second part leaves the structure of the Parisian prison to dive into its financial circuits. It explores two large questions: where does the money come from and where does it go? Finally, the third part penetrates even deeper in the prison world by targeting the men who compose it. The prison, after all, is made up of human relations

La thèse a pour objectif d'étudier l'élaboration de l'espace carcéral de 1791 à 1848 en deux temps. Le livre I, Genèse philosophique et législative de la prison pénale, étudie le réinvestissement de la philosophie dans le droit pénal, et s'intéresse aux premières occurrences formelles de lieux de détention français pensés spécifiquement pour cet usage. Le livre II, La promotion du système cellulaire en France : conséquences, questions de spatialité et de réception, propose une étude analytique du fait carcéral dans sa dimension spatiale, en insistant sur l'élaboration idéologique et formelle de l'espace cellulaire. D'un point de vue épistémologique, le livre I sollicite l'histoire du droit, des idées, et la philosophie politique afin de conclure sur la manière dont les principaux promoteurs de la prison pénale ont influencé les évolutions de la fin du XVIIIe siècle. Le livre II s'intéresse davantage à la théorie d'architecture et analyse la manière dont l'espace carcéral formel s'est construit dans les faits et dans les imaginaires, en concluant sur la question du rapport qu'entretient le corps du détenu avec ce type d'espace contraint, sollicitant alors la sociologie du corps et la psychosociologie de l'espace
The aim of thesis is to study the development of the prison between 1791 and 1848. Part One (‘The philosophical and legislative origins of the penal prison') investigates the philosophical underpinning of penal law during the period, and, in particular, considers the first purpose-built places of detention constructed by the French state. Part Two (‘Consequences of the rise of the individual prison cell in France: spaces and responses) presents an analytical approach to studying the prison as an architectural space, especially the evolution of the ideology behind the prison cell and the formal-spatial qualities of the cell itself. The thesis necessarily draws from a variety of disciplines. In order to discern how the penal prison's main exponents shaped its development at the end of the eighteenth century, Part One brings together material from the histories of law, political philosophy and ideas. By contrast, Part Two concerns the theory of architecture and scrutinises how the formal prison space was constructed both in reality and the imagination: in addressing the link between the detainee's physique and this type of constrained space, it draws from the sociology of the body and the psycho-sociology of space

Cette thèse étudie la naissance et l’évolution de cinéma comme type architectural en examinant deux-cent projets soumis, entre 1907 et 1939, à l’administration parisienne pour le permis de construire. Ceux-ci sont analysés selon quatre critères : l’implantation, les protagonistes, la conception architecturale et la réception des œuvres. Le parc cinématographique parisien, à la veille de la Seconde Guerre, est le résultat de trois vagues de constructions à la suite des événements marquants : la naissance du cinéma narratif (1907-1913), l’Armistice (1919-1920), l’avènement du parlant (1931-1938). Ces trois vagues riment avec trois phases successives dans la genèse du nouveau type : l’expérimentation, la théorisation et la modernisation. Ainsi est mise en évidence la constitution, dès 1907, d’un type originel architecturalement caractérisé par la triade projection-visibilité-publicité. Il en dérive, par la suite, différentes espèces qui, malgré leurs variations, restent « un hangar noir » plus ou moins judicieusement disposés et décorés pour un spectacle projeté sur écran, hangar doublé extérieurement d’une façade parlante et peu ou prou attrayante
This thesis explores the emergence and the evolution of the cinema as a building type. It examines two hundred projects submitted to the Parisian administration for obtaining construction permits, from 1907 to 1939. These projects are analyzed according to four major criteria: localization, protagonists, architectural design and their reception. At the beginning of the Second World War, Parisian cinemas were mostly built through three waves of constructions subsequent to historical events: emergence of narrative cinema (1907-1913), end of the First World War (1919-1920), arrival of talkies (1931-1938). These three waves correspond with three successive phases in the rise of the new building type: experimentation, theorization, modernization. This study demonstrates that an original building type has been created since 1907, which is architecturally characterized by the trio of projection- visibility-appeal. From this original type different pieces are derived, that despite their variations are all a blind shed less or more judiciously designed and decorated for a show projected on the screen, a blind box covered by an attractive and expressive façade