Marking the Carceral Boundary

Abstract

Based on comparative fieldwork conducted in and around four French prisons in 1990-94, this article analyzes processes at work in the `sensitive perimeter' that surrounds and isolates establishments of penal confinement. The first part retraces the nested dynamics of relegation at the planning and building stage that lead to the geographic isolation of carceral establishments - their expurgation from city centers and removal to distant locations devoid of economic and symbolic value. The second part focuses on the distortions induced by carceral divisions in ordinary interactions taking place in the bars and hotels located in the immediate vicinity of prisons. It is found that the dichotomous cleavage effected and materialized by the prison, with inmates embodying `evil' on one side and guards as carriers of `good' on the other, seeps through the walls and infects a wide range of social relationships. The prison both radiates and exports the penal stigma it is assumed to contain, thereby profoundly affecting its proximate social ecology.