leisure activities – likely to promote their personal development and responsible
participation in a free society.
Autonomy and Sexuality. The inspectors observed that few initiatives were conducted
on this issue in institutions catering for minors, despite the fact that their age, and in certain cases
the offences which led them to be sent to the institution, would justify the putting in place of
preventive actions and the provision of information, or even access to contraception 98. Apart
from this fact, professionals working with adolescents cannot be unaware of the social questions
regularly echoed in the media: the influence of pornography on the commencement of sexual
relations among minors, the calling into question of equality between women and men. It is
therefore less a question of promoting sexual relations, which will inevitably occur, than of
implementing initiatives enabling adolescents to engage in a sex life in a responsible manner.
Apart from actions that may be conducted within the framework of care, the CGLPL
recommends the organisation of educational initiatives providing information on sex.
2.2.2 Support Towards Becoming Autonomous, a Demanding Objective, Dependent
upon the Quality of Teams and of Support from the Authorities
In order for placements or imprisonment to constitute something more
than a mere period of exclusion, in order to enable the young person to
really learn to become autonomous and come out a little more mature and
equipped with a minimum of self-confidence and confidence in others,
without which there can be no real integration into society, it appears
necessary to ensure that certain conditions are respected.
On the part of the institution catering for the young person:
98
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in the case of CEFs in particular, an educational project that places an
educational approach at the centre of its objectives and accepts the risks
thereof: there cannot be any education without granting a minimum of trust nor, on
the other hand, without some mistakes; projects of this kind need to be defended in
the face of the supervising authorities and partners as a whole, the members of
steering committees; adopting a position of this kind does not appear to be easy, it
being much simpler to prohibit than to support; thus, in one institution where the
tutors spent much of their time opening and closing doors, a director remarked:
“previously we placed the emphasis on “closed” in “CEF” [literally “closed
educational centre”], we tend somewhat to forget that we are here to engage in
education, we cannot limit ourselves to prohibitions; but the team has difficulty in
keeping up; and so do the authorities”. Insofar as compliance with strictly penal
constraints allows, it would be desirable for EPMs to reflect upon the manner in
which they could, - apart from teaching and the putting in place of traditional
activities -, intensify the provision of educational measures;
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qualified, coordinated, stable, beneficent teams, capable of building strong
educational ties with the minors: minors, whether or not they are offenders, need to
feel that they matter to somebody; making somebody happy and being acknowledged
in return is essential, but because these young people have complex and painful
backgrounds, the educational teams in particular, need to have a sound
theoretical frame of reference, enabling them to make hypotheses,
A question that arises in CEFs, at the time of outings of young people over fifteen years of age.
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