Regulating imbalances: spatialized prison policing and pragmatic racialization of the prison order

In France, two areas of works on racial categorization in prisons have emerged, and both have struggled to find a convincing way of addressing the issue: on the one hand, those who focus on the prison continuum in order to understand the interlocking logics of social and racial exclusion between prisons and working-class neighbourhoods; and on the other, those who examine racialisation only through the prism of the conditions under which racist statements are made. By examining the way in which prison staff designate and group inmates in terms of their place of residence and the networks of acquaintances associated with it, the article looks at the intertwined effects of the processes of racialisation and territorialization on the way in which inmates are assigned to prison. Based on an ethnographic survey of two French prisons, it shows how territorial categorization applied to young men from working-class backgrounds reproduces forms of racialization and disqualification of prisoners targeted by practices of cell grouping practices. The latitude given to prison management staff in the assignments therefore appears to be decisive. In the two prisons surveyed, this led to the establishment of “balancing” standards in the composition of units, revealing a pragmatic process of racialisation structuring the prison order.