Introduction: normativités et réclusion en contexte de demande sécuritaire / Introduction: Norms and Imprisonment in the Context of Demands for Security

This text introduces a special issue devoted to the tension between security and legal constraints and aims to question the impact of this tension on the management of confinement. This movement is in fact less an « opening » or a « democratization » of the deprivation of liberty than a new inflection of its process. The analysis will be developed along four main lines. First the institutional framework of the gradual entry of(human) rights into the field of detention will be considered (genesis of the rules, technical means to support human rights). Secondly, we will focus on the coexistence of several norms originating from legal doctrine or other rationalities. Then we will study the impact of this new legal framework on the work culture of prison staff and those of other places of confinement, but also on legal practitioners who are now involved in this process. Finally, we will discuss more generally the influence of this framework on the daily life of prisons and its effect on the order, always negotiated locally, which governs the relations between inmates and guards.