Communication to the Annual Meeting of the Association of American Geographer, april 14, 2011 in Seattle

1. Christophe Mincke
Mobilitarian ideology
in discourses on
imprisonment
Mobility behind the walls?
AAG Annual Congress - Seattle - April 15, 2011

2. Mobilitarian ideology?
• A new representation of time & spaceS
• Decompartmentalization
• Continuum and inhomogeneity
• Mobility as a value & mobilitarian ideology
• Activity (do it),
Activation (do it by yourself),
Participation (be part of it),
Adaptation (be flexible)
AAG 2011 - www.mincke.be

3. Prison?
• Looking for mobility where it couldn’t be
• Penitentiary law (nature of the punishment, aims,
internal regulation of jails, rights and procedures,
communication with the outside, etc.)
• Rich parliamentry documents
(«commission Dupont» & debates)
• Work in progress
AAG 2011 - www.mincke.be

4. Prison and immobility
• Liberty deprivation at the heart of the modern penal system
• Prison as incapacitation
• Prison as walls
• Inmates categorization
• Prison time : repetition and immobility
• Imprisonment as a slack period
Prison: a punitive immobility
AAG 2011 - www.mincke.be

5. Mobility tests
• Hypothesis of a shift: from painful immobility to
mobility tests
• immobility  mobility
• punishement  test
• Looking for:
• Calls to activity, activation, participation & adaptation
• Evolution of the spatial perception of prison
• Mobility tests
AAG 2011 - www.mincke.be

6. Management of the Self imperatives
Context: reframing the prison projects & the
difficulties it induces (dependency)
• Activity (do it): inmates & workers as actors of
prison
• Activation (do it by yourself)
• Offers of opportunities in prison
• Detention plan
AAG 2011 - www.mincke.be

7. Management of social relation
imperatives
• Participation (be part of it)
• Social relations with the outside (victims & reparation,
assistance structures, family)
• Social relations inside the prison (community regime)
• Adaptation (be flexible)
• Reinsertion as a readaptation & help as autonomy-
friendly
• Flexible application of norms
AAG 2011 - www.mincke.be

8. Prison as physical space
• If you want social space to be open...
• ... physical space has to be opened
• Imprisonment limited to physical immobility
• Prison loses its exclusivity & integrates a prison
continuum
AAG 2011 - www.mincke.be

9. Towards mobility tests
• Prison as an open and transitory space
• Rejection of retribution and rehabilitation
• A prison without specifical aims
• Reduction of detrimental effects and the end of prison
• Management of prison trajectories on the basis of
mobility tests
• Management of rights in the framework of mobility tests
AAG 2011 - www.mincke.be

10. A powerful ideology
• Strangeness of mobility in prison
• Impossibility of prison legitimation
• ... development of an efficient mobilitarian
discourse
AAG 2011 - www.mincke.be

11. A powerful ideology
• Strangeness of mobility in prison
• Impossibility of prison legitimation
• ... development of an efficient mobilitarian
discourse
AAG 2011 - www.mincke.be

13. Christophe Mincke
Facultés universitaires Saint-Louis (Brussels)
Online at www.mincke.be