The analysis of the identification systems and surveillance practices of prison staff has led us to problematize the treatment of radicalization based on the following question: what does the development of a culture of vigilance in the context of the risk of radicalization in prisons imply for these staff? In the context of this culture, wouldn’t we be asking people to perceive something they would help produce?
Part 2 of the report is inspired by this approach by posing the problem of how to discriminate against the friend of the enemy, to put it here in Schmittian terms; with now the uncertainty of a puzzling figure, all the more dangerous as it could be everywhere in the absence of precise definitions. But this does not prevent politicians from acting as we already know, particularly in the field of anticipated punishability by substituting dangerousness for guilt.
This brings us back to the political dimension relating to all attempts at identity categorizations (the “Radicalized Islamist”) leading us to resurrect the old demons of the positivist conception of social defense (part 2). Forecasting, prediction, prevention, anticipation… prison staff are among the frontline actors in driving the desire for predictability of security policies. Risk and anticipation/prediction and preemption are the two couples within which the will to punish is organized. Like two sides of the same coin, they push staff to intervene early.
Part 3 analyses the local knowledge of prison officers involved in the monitoring and control of offenders, some of whom, after being pinned down by the tracking devices, become absolute enemies.
Therefore, the question about this part, which guided our investigation, is formulated as follows: what is asking people to predict what may happen makes them do? The collection of staff discourses and analyses on the issue of dealing with radicalisation in prisons constitutes a body of knowledge, often more nuanced and graduated than the mere stiffness of expert knowledge.
In the end, to construct the logic of the problem is also to think about the need for coupling between local knowledge and expert knowledge to highlight the tensions, and therefore the resistances, that cross and underpin the care. This leads us to propose a theoretical and practical bias quick to seek solutions in the professional experience of the actors rather than relying solely on the recommendations of the experts.
Be that as it may, this work nourishes the desire to provoke questioning and debates by opening up a perspective of action that invites, in terms of ethics in particular, and to put it like Ruwen Ogien , to propose that “less is better”: fewer interventions, fewer principles, fewer rules; in any case, on the basis of the results of this research, we suggest the use of intervention and monitoring practices located as far as possible at the antipodes of control policies based on the prediction of the future behaviour of litigants, which this work proposes, among other things, to analyze.
Introduction
Building a logic of the problem
Part 1 “Radicalization”, a notion with indeterminate extension
- Reflections on the scientific reappropriation of a very problematic notion
- The subject of the research
- The method
Part 2 Turning uncertainty into risk
- Crisis situation and a priori suspicion A political questioning
- Social defence as a topicality and framework for the intelligibility of the treatment of radicalisation
- The identification/dangerousness paradigm “The future is already in the present”: anticipating the unpredictable
Part 3 Local knowledge “sandblasted” voices
- Expert and secular knowledge
- The critical force of local knowledge
- Conclusion Towards predictive governance?
- Methodological addendum: feedback on the research and its project
EPTA
Brie, G. & Rambourg, C. (2020). Dire et prédire la radicalisation. Le cas de la prison. Centre Interdisciplinaire de Recherche Appliquée au champ Pénitentiaire.
