P110 - Unlocking Potential in the study of carceral space: Lefebvre's lens to understand the social production of carceral space in secure care units for youth.

• In Event: Poster Session & Ice Cream Social

Abstract

In Quebec, children who need to be removed from their families for their own protection, and youth identified as offenders and sentenced to custody, all end up in the same place: rehabilitation centers. In these centers, most young people are housed in open units, but some will experience one or more stays in secure care units. These units, with their ambiguous status, where practitioners must reconcile objectives of control, rehabilitation and care, are inseparable from a concept that is too often sidelined in research: that of space, or more precisely carcera space. The very existence of the secure care units is essentially based on its spatial dimension, which makes it possible to significantly restrict young people's freedoms, sometimes in damaging ways, with the aim of changing their behavior. Despite the imminently spatial nature of these units, very few studies have addressed this dimension, most focusing instead on intervention and surveillance practices or on the subjective experience of young people and practitioners (Chantraine et al., 2012; Sallée, 2015). The present paper is based on two postulates: (1) we must take into account the dynamic and socially constructed nature of space, as supported by many studies on space in the field of human geography (Lefebvre, 1974; Harvey, 2006; Löw, 2016); (2) we cannot simply study practices or experiences while leaving aside the concept of space, or at least ignoring its dynamic and socially constructed nature. Following these two postulates, the presentation aims to propose an innovative theoretical framework in criminology, that of Henri Lefebvre's theory of the social production of space (1974), to understand how secure space is socially produced by young people and practitioners. A discussion will follow on the multiple avenues that an integrated understanding of the social production of secure space would open for criminology.

Author

• sabrina bourget, Université Laval