Confined in prison: The penitentiary experience at the time of COVID-19
During the COVID-19 pandemic, exceptional measures that restricted freedoms were applied using the motto : “Stay home ! ” If the prison became a metaphor for confinement, little is known about how this period was experienced by actual detainees. Based on an ethnographic field study conducted in five French prisons during the pandemic in 2020 and 2021, and combining observations and interviews, the present article questions the impacts of confinement policies on the penitentiary experience. We show that the alteration or suspension of the major activities that inmates are required to partake in during their time in prison (school and training, work, healthcare)–and whose commitment is rewarded in ordinary times by sentence reductions and accommodations–has exacerbated one of the main paradoxes of an institution that pushes its population towards “activity,” while forcing them into immobility. We suggest that it is the very meaning of the prison sentence, built around the theme of “reintegration,” which has been disturbed in the context of a standstill institution and a confined society.