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The Professionals of Criticism. The Production of an Institutionalized Critique within the

Societes Contemporaines, ISSN: 1150-1944, Vol: 125, Issue: 1, Page: 117-145
2022
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Article Description

Based on a survey combining interviews and a series of ethnographic observations, this article examines the critical work carried out by the members of the Contrôleur général des lieux de privation de liberté (CGLPL), an independent authority created in 2007 to monitor the respect of fundamental rights for those detained in a vast array of institutions, including prisons and police custody facilities. By studying this recent «bureaucracy of control», this contribution proposes to analyze the place of critique when it comes from an institution whose members see distanced criticism as part of their "profession", even if most of these members are themselves former officials from the penal or repressive institutions they are supposed to evaluate. To answer this question, I focus on the generation of the 12 "founding" controllers, recruited at the time of the institution's creation and whose first task was to define the approach and specific control methods of the CGLPL. The first part of the article traces the trajectories of these controllers, and emphasizes their internal socialization to criticism through their very institutional career. The second part of the article looks at the negotiation of criticism between «controllers» during their visits of establishments.

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