Locating the origins of and transformations in the profession of prison counselor within the context of public policy can help to clarify the evolution that has taken place in the penal system and, more broadly, the action of the state. Heir to prison social work, this profession as it is officially defined also signals a break with a certain vision of assistance and intervention which favors partnerships and contractual logic. It is through the normative acts which govern the work of counselors that one aspect of the transformations in the welfare state can be grasped: being the product of a charitable activity that was gradually institutionalized within the prison socio-educational service, the production and reentry service as it was set up in 1999 assumes a more judicial function aimed at individualizing the sentence.
Didier Fassin lecturing at the Institute for Advanced Study in 2014
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