What adolescent bodies tell us about imprisonment

This article looks at Belgian public institutions for delinquent young boys through the lens of adolescent bodies and their sensory experiences. Inspired by scientific literature dealing with the bodies of adult prison inmates, particularly the body as "control site" and "site of resistance" (Frigon, 2012), ethnographic data collected in four closed institutions for young boys is analysed. Information on these institutions and on the methodological approach used in the work is provided, followed by a discussion of the changing adolescent body as it grows or stops growing during confinement in order to identify the marks left by institutionalization and the dynamics of corporal defence.