PRISONS, PRISON SENTENCES AND PUBLIC-ORDER

This article puts forward the thesis that in contemporary democratic society the primary function of the penal form of imprisonment is to legitimize the "ordinary" use of prison in order to maintian everday order but this use is still suspected of being arbitrary. The Constituent Assembly invention of the prison sentence is in fact not so much the result of a penal project than a reply to the need for maintaining (using penalty imprisonment in legal form) the confinement practices of the Ancien Regime. However, the "creative myth" behind the prison sentence is the "humanistic" search for the "suitable sentence" which will allow the prisoner to amend his ways. This myth meant that there was an ever-growing process to legitimize discourse on reform. The authors of this article examine this reform discourse during the xixth century and its reappearance after the French Liberation (1945).