Issues
In France, 95% of all juvenile offenders prosecuted in criminal proceedings completed between 2012 and 2021 were found guilty at first instance by a juvenile court. Of these convicted minors, 33% were sentenced to imprisonment (of which 19% were suspended) and 52% were subject to educational measures for minors (figures calculated by IPP researchers using data from the Cassiopée statistical file). A third of all juvenile sentences are therefore prison sentences, which are the main sanction imposed.
There is little scientific literature in economics on the specific impact of the imprisonment of young people on their educational and professional careers, and none in France. However, given the results measured in other contexts on adult populations, notably in terms of reintegration into the labour market, we can assume that incarceration could have a particularly strong impact on minors. For them, deprivation of liberty comes at a crucial time of identity-building and human capital accumulation, at a time when they could have been continuing their education or gaining initial work experience. It is therefore likely to have a particularly strong impact on their educational and professional careers.
The project
The data analysis proposed in this project aims to answer the following questions:
- Do young people who have been incarcerated as minors manage to enter the labour market when they leave prison? This question can be examined by looking at the probability of being in education or employment and the characteristics of any training or employment (type of contract, salary, type of occupation, working hours, sector of activity), as well as the probability of being neither in education nor in employment in the short term.
- Do difficulties (or success) in reintegration after release from prison translate into permanent estrangement (or reintegration) from the labour market? The authors examine longer-term, cumulative employment variables.
Method and data
The researchers propose to contribute to the creation of a database at individual level, making it possible to track the career paths of minors under juvenile justice supervision: i) their path within the judicial system, and for some, in prison, ii) their educational trajectory upstream of judicial supervision and after release, and iii) their professional trajectory as young adults. This represents a major challenge. The first hurdle that the authors propose to overcome as part of this project, and on which the project’s ambition is based, is to enable a match to be made between individual administrative data under the jurisdiction of three ministries: Justice, Education and Labor.
Once the authors have built up this original database in France, they will be able to proceed with the detailed descriptive analysis phase. Because of its longitudinal nature, this database will be particularly well-suited to studying the short, medium and long-term trajectories of incarcerated minors. The exhaustive nature of the data will also ensure its representativeness on a national scale, and sufficient statistical power to enable the exploration of several dimensions of heterogeneity. This initial analysis will aim to provide a clear description of the educational and professional trajectories of minors who have been incarcerated, and will therefore shed new light on what happens to these young people after their incarceration. This analysis will thus complement the sociological and anthropological work already carried out (or in progress) in France, which provides a wealth of information on the experiences and incarceration context of the samples of young people interviewed. The descriptive analysis carried out as part of this project will also be a preliminary step towards a more causal analysis that we intend to carry out in the longer term, probably beyond the two years devoted to this project.
Research team
- Camille Hémet – coordinator U. Paris 1 – PSE, IPP
- Manon Garrouste – U. Lille, IPP
- Nina Guyon, ENS-PSE, IPP
- Laura Khoury, U. Dauphine, IPP
- Léa Dousset, PSE, IPP
- Maëlle Stricot, PSE, IPP
Publication
A minimum IPP report will be published for this project by the end of 2025.
Partners
This project was initiated by the French Ombudsman, with the support of the Direction de la protection judiciaire de la jeunesse (DPJJ) and the Institut des études et de la recherche sur le droit et la justice (IERDJ).
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