Le métier de conseiller d’insertion et de probation : dans les coulisses de l’État pénal ?

This study of the changing profession of “counselors of integration and probation” (conseillers d’insertion et de probation, Cip) proposes a sociology of occupational groups that takes into account both statutory and moral considerations. Turning social services in prisons into a “penitentiary service of integration and probation” has involved professionalization, “juridicization” (with a shift from social work to the field of law) as well as a switch from a “compassionate” toward a “repressive” pole of interventions. Based on a survey conducted in prison, this study of work situations and conflicts helps us formulate the problems of ruptures and continuities in relation to both these employees’ individual trajectories and the institutional framework of their actions. This case study of Cip, an occupational group seen herein as a litmus test of what the penal institution does to persons under a court order, enables us to imagine an ethnography of the “state in acts”.