Abstract
This sociology of experiences in this detention, conducted in the Lavaur juvenile justice establishment (in the Tarn region of France), identifies the social practices of the detainees in and around their cells, in order to understand the ways in which control is expressed, as well as the strategies employed to get around control. Because although being locked in one’s cell is a difficult experience for a young detainee, he can, paradoxically, reappropriate the characteristics of a critical form of resistance to prison control. The cell is therefore simultaneously a space of isolation and of arrogance: a private space that lends itself to re-appropriation. Similarly, leaving the cell to escape prison discipline leads these adolescents to join in collective activities designed to (re-)educate them.