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Présentation

Marie Dumollard and Anta Niang

« Faire rupture » dans les trajectoires délinquantes : catégorisations professionnelles et placement de mineurs en centres éducatifs renforcés

Ilona Cler
This article sheds light on the process for referring young offenders in France to semi-secure educational centres (SSECs). According to correctional discourses, these special facilities for minors are designed to “break” the cycle of delinquency. The results of a qualitative study involving youth court judges and other socio-legal professionals provide further insight into the mechanisms surrounding the use of this placement option.To begin with, the article shows the importance of age, gender, and special needs for understanding the referral process. It goes on to argue that these criteria need to be analyzed in the light of processes inherent to the justice system, professional interdependence, and operational constraints facing SSECs. Such factors help determine the objectives cited by judges, some of whom stress the importance of distance. Specifically, based on their location, SSECs allow for removing young offenders from their everyday living environments. Granted, as some professionals have pointed out, this approach creates challenges in terms of following up with the young people concerned. Nevertheless, it tends to be valued for its supposed ability to “contain” young offenders while preparing them for reintegration into society.The analysis aims to enhance the literature on the youth criminal justice system by raising questions about the judicial processing of young offenders and the underlying spatial logics.

D’une étiquette à l’autre. Des jeunesses entre pénal et handicap

Nadia Beddiar, Ilona Cler, Mathias Millet, Guillaume Teillet and Manon Veaudor
This article analyzes processes that shape the lives of disabled young people who also find themselves involved with the criminal justice system in France. It explores the social conditions and institutional stages that lead these individuals to trade one label for another and that differentiate their childhood experiences of the social world. Initially, the young people concerned are differentiated according to their basic characteristics and inclinations, and through their interactions with educational institutions. As medical and/or legal perspectives are brought to bear on the challenges they face in school and/or at home, these individuals find themselves singled out very early in their lives. Their differences are then reaffirmed within the youth justice system. Deemed special cases from the outset, they face criminal proceedings that differ from those faced by other youth due to reliance on special legal measures and “exceptional” professional services. Finally, the transition to adulthood represents a pivotal moment when a new series of distinctions play out, as institutions for adults with disabilities offer a way out of youth correctional facilities. Together, these factors contribute to the reconfiguration of social positions, with institutional verdicts helping to (re)produce an inherited or newly acquired working-class status.

« À 18 ans, tout change et rien ne change ». Inégalités entre jeunes dans les prisons françaises lors du passage à l’âge adulte

Yaëlle Amsellem-Mainguy and Isabelle Lacroix
This article is based on a sociological study that involved over a hundred individual interviews, three group interviews with inmates aged 14 to 24 at youth and adult detention facilities in France, and observations of daily interactions at such facilities. It explores how young offenders experience the transition to legal adulthood, with a focus on the move from youth facilities to adult ones. Drawing on both the sociology of age relations and the sociology of prisons, the analysis aims to understand the challenges faced by these young people as they transition to adulthood—a topic that has received relatively little attention in recent years, in contrast to the extensive literature on young people in the child welfare system. First, we discuss the pivotal moment when young offenders are required to leave juvenile facilities upon turning 18. Then, we highlight the absence of professional guidance for navigating this transition. Instead, the young people concerned tend to rely on resources that predate their incarceration, especially information on adult facilities gleaned from social media. This leads to knowledge disparities about the differences between youth and adult detention facilities. Young women, foreigners who arrived in France as unaccompanied minors, and those with relatively little education tend to find themselves most isolated and dependent on correctional services as they experience the transition to adulthood behind bars.

Jeunes en sortie de placement lors de la transition à la vie adulte et judiciarisation : le rôle du réseau de soutien

Christophe Gauthier-Davies, Martin Goyette and Tonio Esposito
Young people who leave care during the transition to adulthood are at greater risk of adult criminal conviction than their peers in the general population. The context of social vulnerability that surrounds the aging-out process can channel young people from youth protection services to the adult criminal justice system. Additionally, certain aspects of foster and residential care, such as placement instability and time spent in group homes, increase the likelihood of facing criminal charges during the transition to adulthood. Given these vulnerabilities, our article focuses on the role played by support networks in avoiding criminal conviction in adult court or incarceration in an adult correctional facility. Using data from a longitudinal research study (the Étude sur le devenir des jeunes placés, or EDJeP), we examine interaction effects between support network size and conditions of care (placement instability and group home placements). The results of logistic regression analysis show that young people with more extensive support networks are at lower risk of adult criminal conviction. Our analysis also shows a moderating effect of network size on such involvement as a function of placement instability. However, we observed no moderating effect as a function of group home placement. Our findings point to the need for policies that address the role played by support networks in the lives of young people leaving care.

Les biographies entrepreneuriales de la rupture : s’accomplir par la rue chez les jeunes au Cameroun

Hugues Morell Meliki
In urban areas, various activities take place in the street. This article reassesses small-scale, street-based commercial activities that have traditionally been understood in terms of short-term perspectives on a survival economy. Based on a dynamic panel analysis of the results of an eight-year ethnographic survey, supplemented by biographical data, the analysis shows how these aspects of street life can, in fact, transform young people’s lives by opening innovative entrepreneurial pathways in a context of social exclusion. The article discusses three main phases that shape this process of business career development among disadvantaged youth in Yaoundé and Douala while exploring the associated mindsets and meanings. Initially, the often frustrating experience of insecurity leads the young people concerned to reflect on the role played by their social background. In turn, this triggers a biographical disruption that takes shape amid the struggle for success. Driven by a desire to escape the life of misery typical of their families’ socio-economic circumstances, youth may opt for life on the street, where they can engage in small-scale commercial activities and pursue a business career.

Les relations sociales et sexuelles des jeunes hommes gais et bisexuels montréalais durant la COVID-19 : résultats d’une enquête qualitative

Geoffrey Ferber, Tara Chanady, Jorges Flores-Aranda and Olivier Ferlatte
The COVID-19 pandemic prompted various public health measures, including the closure of social venues, physical distancing requirements, and general curfews. These social restrictions posed specific challenges for young gay and bisexual men, a group historically vulnerable to mental health problems and social isolation. This article is based on a study designed to understand the impact of pandemicrelated public health measures on the social and sexual relationships of young gay and bisexual men aged 18 to 26. Employing a qualitative descriptive interpretive design, the underlying study involved semi-structured interviews with 14 individuals living in Montreal. Thematic analysis revealed three themes regarding the impact of COVID-19 measures on the social and sexual lives of research participants: (1) social erosion as a marker of increasing loneliness, (2) a collective sense of injustice in a population that feltit was disproportionately burdened by often infantilizing public health measures, and (3) continued social activities despite pandemic-related fears. The results highlight the suffering and feelings of injustice experienced by young gay and bisexual men due to severe constraints on social interaction and, by extension, the loss of a spontaneoussexual life. The article includesrecommendations for improvement and further research on how Quebec-based community organizations can better support young gay and bisexual men.