Mettray: A History of France's Most Venerated Carceral Institution

The Mettray Penal Colony was a private reformatory without walls, established in France in 1840 for the rehabilitation of young male delinquents. Foucault linked its opening to the most significant change in the modern status of prisons and now, at last, Stephen Toth takes us behind the gates to show how the institution legitimized France's repression of criminal youth and added a unique layer to the nation's carceral system. Drawing on insights from sociology, criminology, critical theory, and social history, Stephen Toth dissects Mettray's social anatomy, exploring inmates' experiences. More than 17,000 young men passed through the reformatory before its closure, and Toth situates their struggles within changing conceptions of childhood and adolescence in modern France. Mettray demonstrates that the colony was an ill-conceived project marked by internal contradictions. Its social order was one of subjection and subversion, as officials struggled for order and inmates struggled for autonomy. Toth's formidable archival work exposes the nature of the relationships between, and among, prisoners and administrators. He explores the daily grind of existence: living conditions, discipline, labor, sex, and violence. Thus, he gives voice to the incarcerated, not simply to the incarcerators, whose ideas and agendas tend to dominate the historical record. Mettray is, above all else, a deeply personal illumination of life inside France's most venerated carceral institution.

Table of Contents:
List of Illustrations Acknowledgments Introduction 1. Origins 2. Regime 3. Resistance 4. Discord 5. Maison Paternelle 6. Denouement Conclusion Notes Bibliography Index

About the Author :
Stephen A. Toth is Associate Professor of Modern European History at Arizona State University. The primary focus of his research examines the history of incarceration, most particularly the evolution of the prison in theory and practice, in modern France and the Francophone world. He is the author of Beyond Papillon and numerous scholarly articles. He has been the recipient of research grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the American Philosophical Society.

Review :
Mettray is a model for those interested in studying youth incarceration, gender, and sexuality. I anticipate that many graduate classes on modern history, especially the history of gender and sexuality, will adopt this work for discussion in graduate seminars. (Journal of Social History) Mettray undertakes quite an extensive exploration of the rich archive of this significant institution [a] most engaging history. (French History) Toth immerses his reader in a micro-history based on a rich bibliography and, above all, by an exhaustive examination of the archives of the penal colony of Mettray As [he] shows, what began as a resolutely utopian project that emerged from an optimistic representation of juvenile delinquents by reformers in the first half of the nineteenth century was marked by a slow drift towards a strictly authoritarian and punitive model. (International Review of Social History) Stephen A. Toth's beautifully written history of the Mettray agricultural colony for delinquent boys is an exciting, original addition to the history of youth, the history of carceral society, the history of sexuality, and the history of modern France. (European History Quarterly)