abilities to their fullest potential”; as well as “the preparation of the child for responsible life in a free society…” It is difficult to envisage an ambition of this kind without the margin of autonomy required for any learning process, with its share of trial and error and mistakes. At the same time, access to adulthood is also measured by a person’s capacity to accept frustrations; there cannot therefore be any education without the learning of limits. It may therefore be said that education under constraint constitutes both a paradox and a balance (1) while, in any case, supporting the child towards becoming autonomous constitutes an educational requirement in a free society (2). 2.1 Education under Constraint, Insoluble Paradox or Delicate Balance? Although minors imprisoned in EPMs have the benefit of multidisciplinary measures jointly put in place for them by the judicial youth protection service and the national education system, the penal aspect proves to be predominant. It is manifested in the predominant role of prison staff, the existence of bodies and methods of constraint specific to the prisons administration (disciplinary committee and punishment wing, searches, monitored visits, accompaniment by a prison officer at the time of movements, locking up in cells, at night and apart from activity and exercise times, use of handcuffs at the time of removal from prison etc.). The architecture of the buildings was originally intended to be less “penal” than in traditional institutions – EPMs are of limited size (sixty places in the majority of cases), the accommodation units are small (six to ten persons) and, in general, have a green area or sports ground next to them –, although over the years they have tended to take on a more penal character: “passages of movement” marked off by wire fences have gradually been put in place, in order to organise the internal area and make it secure. Each institution has the benefit of a well-equipped sports hall, a collective area able to host a wide range of activities (library, table tennis etc.) and a local educational unit. In addition, each accommodation unit has a dining room and a common activities room. Although the educational dimension is affirmed, with the intention of “anticipating, promoting and preparing the conditions of their social integration at the time of their release”, it is implemented by means of compulsory educational activities, vocational training, sports and socio-educational activities, for which failure to attend may lead to disciplinary sanctions 86. Support towards becoming autonomous, as a right for adolescents to analyse, understand and choose the rules to which they agree to submit, disappears behind a more limited objective of social integration. We shall therefore, for the most part, address the question of the process of becoming autonomous through the examination of CEFs. Indeed, CEFs are at the crossroads between two different approaches, the punitive and the educational, and in this respect constitute a sui generis87 category of institutions, pursuing a double purpose: - the restriction of liberty, accompanied by control measures resulting from a criminal judgement; - the putting in place of a reinforced and personalised educational and pedagogical project coming within the field of social welfare. 86 87 Cf. circular of 24th May 2013 concerning the prison regime for minors. The only new category of institution created by a law. 106