Abstract
The Juvenile Correctional Institution (établissement pénitentiaire pour mineurs - EPM) is a recent form of confinement to manage delinquent youth in France. This penal institution allows for a decentering of the sociological perspective allowing the apprehension of detention from the bottom up. A sociology of confinement experiences makes it possible to grasp the strategies developed by young prisoners in order to stage a production of themselves aimed at improving their everyday life intra-muros. Bound by the double constraint to respond to different professional demands of the institution and to satisfy expectations and codes of co- detainees, confined teenagers put forward a dual posture which conditions their life in prison. These minors try to use the spatial-temporal layout of the EPM to the best of their advantage to demonstrate, more or less ostensibly, their ability to adopt behaviours and actions likely to guarantee the production of an idealized impression of themselves, staged for all to see.