“Wheter you like it or not, here it's a jail”: the hybrid institutions interfacing with the prison

Abstract

This paper will focus on give an account of what we call "hybrid institutions of interface with prison" through the results of two distinct researches that took place in a forensic hospital and in a juvenile detention center to juveniles in conflict with law. Hybrid institutions of interface with prison are those that, from their legal formulation to their establishment, aim to articulate the jail with other non-prison institutions such as schools and hospitals. Through the analysis of empirical examples, the authors try to show how the supposedly non-prison character of these organizations gains the quality of a performance, revealing itself as ceremonial. The performative openness that characterizes these institutions guarantees them legitimacy in the face of non-punitive social demands, but it also complements the punitive logic by updating and refining the forms of semi-imputable and inimputable population control.