assessments (which have increased in number), for several years prison rules have been increasingly implementing processes of assessment of personalities for various different re asons: prevention of suicides, development of personalities, assessment of dangerousness 111, preparation for release etc. These assessment processes 112 are themselves of variable intensity according to the person concerned. Analyses and examinations of individual situations are becoming more frequent, whether conducted within prison “single multidisciplinary committees” or elsewhere. This is henceforth leading, as we know, to a diversification of systems of imprisonment (“closed system”, “trust system” etc.). The division between the two approaches raises two questions. On the one hand, that of the respective weight given to uniformity and personalisation. On this point, we may limit ourselves to the observation that, in spite of the development of tools for distinction and work (and prison rehabilitation and probation counsellors in particular), the concrete realities of imprisonment procedures remain relatively uniform. This is true to such an extent that prisoners have difficulty in understanding the investigation processes to which they are subject, since the differences of treatment resulting therefrom are barely noticeable. On the other hand, and above all, the question of factors weighing in favour of uniformity and elements promoting “differentiation”, factors and elements which often lead to frustration of the provisions of the rules. In certain cases, staff try to break with uniformity in order to encourage diversity; in other situations, the opposite is sought. Analysis of these differences is of course a decisive consideration in understanding conditions of imprisonment. Here we will only examine the subject in a cursory manner. The factors that encourage uniformity obviously involve considerations of convenience of management. Differences are costly in time and in terms of the spaces where staff have to be deployed for the management of prisoners’ daily lives. Pressures weighing upon the number of prison officers and, in the opposite direction, upon prisoner numbers in remand prisons (overcrowding), unquestionably make time-saving (of which absence of differentiation is a component part) a necessity. A single example can provide an illustration of this. The code of criminal procedure once again provides for113 a special system for “young adults” (18-21 years of age), especially with regard to teaching and training, on the one hand, and isolation at night, on the other. Apart from a few exceptions, this system is never implemented. This need to adapt to staff numbers and concrete resources is compounded by a will to play down incidents and avoid dwelling upon situations for which, as often in prison, no obvious solution is available. Thus, the mass treatment of extremely varied pathologies, without recourse to in depth enquiries, by means of a few widely distributed anti-inflammatories114, suffices most of the time, but not in all cases. Another factor of equal (or, on the contrary unequal) treatment is constituted by the type of relations that staff maintain with prisoners. These relations are affected by how well-known the prisoner in question is: the less prison officers know about individual prisoners, the more they will treat them in an impersonal manner (for example in large institutions). In addition, the more vulnerable prison officers feel, the more they will maintain their distance by means of impersonal relations. Thus prisoners often say that female prison officers place much more importance on following the rules to the letter (and therefore take a more impersonal approach) than male prison officers, since they cannot expect to assert the necessary ascendency by means of physical force. However, a distinction of this kind obviously goes beyond considerations of 111 On this point, see the contrôle général ’s report for 2011, p. Often still referred to as “orientation” in the texts (cf. articles D. 75 et seq. of the code of criminal procedure). 113 Articles D. 521 and D. 521-1. 114 Cf. on this point the images of the film “A l’ombre de la République” filmed at the prison of Bourg-en-Bresse 112 52