2. Development of Autonomy among Minors Deprived of Liberty Young offenders’ institutions (CEF) and prisons for minors (EPM) were created by the Act laying down the basic principles for government action in the field of Justice of 9th September 2002. Both types of institution cater for minors between 13 and 18 years of age. According to the report appended to the Act, which constitutes the grounds for the latter, the creation of these institutions was based upon an observed increase in both criminality among minors and the visibility thereof. They fulfil the need to make a “firm response” to crime among minors and “to reassert the value of punishment, while continuing and extending prevention and rehabilitation initiatives”. CEFs were initially designed to provide an alternative to prison for young multiple recidivists and repeat offenders subject to judicial supervision or probation orders, until the system was extended by various different legislative provisions – the Acts of 9th March 2004, 5th March 2007 and 10th August 2011 – to conditional release and day-release, as well as to minors guilty of certain categories of offences 83 without conditions of previous history. The Act of 9th September 2002 provides that these minors shall be subject to “measures of surveillance and control making it possible to organise the provision of a reinforced educational and pedagogical follow-up programme adapted to their personality”, in an institution offering conditions of education and security adapted to their intended purpose, that is to say enabling verification that they are actually present. In a ruling of 29th August 2002, the Constitutional Council validated the measure while, however, specifying that: “the centre shall be legally rather than materially closed, in the sense that running away may lead to the rebellious minor’s imprisonment”. In practice, it is possible to climb over walls and wire meshes, but they are nevertheless present. The Act provides that infringement of the obligations incumbent upon the minor pursuant to measures having led to their placement in the CEF may, depending on the case, lead to the minor being placed on remand or imprisoned 84. The same Act provides that the imprisonment of minors shall take place either in a special wing of a remand prison or within specialised independent institutions whose creation is expressly envisaged. These new prisons for minors – EPM – are characterised according to the terms of the report appended to the Act by “continuous action on the part of the departments of the judicial youth protection service with the whole of the imprisoned minors, since the latter justify the provision of a multidisciplinary programme and personalised support”. While creating these firmly coercive measures, the Act reasserts the importance placed upon the guiding principles of the statutory instrument of 1945, that is to say the primacy of the educational over the repressive approach. For this reason, the legislature asserted its will to give an educational dimension to imprisonment minors. According to the Convention on the Rights of the Child 85, education means “the development of the child’s personality, talents and mental and physical 83 Offences and harm to persons of a certain level of seriousness, including indictable offences. 84 It is to be noted that the measure allows the imprisonment of minors under 16 years of age with regard to indictable offences, which was not previously authorised by the statutory instrument (ordonnance) of 2nd February 1945. 85 Adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on 20th November 1989 and ratified by France on 2nd July 1990. 105