The French model of juvenile justice, synonymous with protection and integration since the Second World War, has become complex.

The ordinance of 2 February 1945 relating to juvenile delinquency was at the beginning of the 1980s at the heart of lively debate about the practices.  The principles - specialized competence, criminal liability diminished according to age and priority to educational activity (Bourquin, 2012 ; Youf 2008 ; Meirieu, 2009) rather than repression - are discussed by policy makers (Sallé, 2017). With the arrival of the UN CRC in 1989 and the introduction of art. 37 (on detention and punishment of children) and art. 40 (on juvenile justice), children committing crimes would no longer be treated as “objects” but as real “subjects” (Youf, 2002 ; Bernuz Beneitez & Dumortier, 2018) whose rights should be respected in the judicial process. Practices were oriented for educational activity in little group of younger or with parents, creation of “open centers”.

At the beginning of the 1990s, justice juvenile is at the heart of lively debate between the ministries of Justice and of the Interior (Wykens, 2006), many transformations took place (“New” forms of social prevention, police intervention (Lazerges & Balduyck, 1998) intended to inform the minor and the parents, etc.) The greatest transformation is the intervention of the prosecutor (Wykens, 2006), although the prosecutor has the legal power to initiate criminal proceedings and to compel a minor to appear before a judge. He has rarely exercised this right. Now minors aged 13 to 18 can be placed on probation in legal placement.

The norms of the child's right in the "new" French juvenile justice, especially in local realities are changed. The purpose of this communication is centering its paying attention to the pragmatic of the child’s right between national policies and educators’ practices in two probation centers.

Inspired by the French pragmatic sociology of Boltanski (Boltanski & Thevenot 1991 ; Boltanski & Chiappello, 1999 ; Boltanski, 2009) and Latour (Latour, 1999) this perspective emphasizes the concrete description of the texts elaborated by the decision makers. What rights of children are translated into French legal text? For example are "participation rights" the same or different in closed educational centers and open educational centers ? Although a civic justification (Boltanski & Thevenot 1991 ; Boltanski & Chiappello, 1999) as "the interest of children" (Derobert, 2016; inpress) is present in judges and social-worker practice, implementing children’s right in tension with three other perspectives.

First, the intervention of the prosecutor is about the interest of society and specialized judges are "adapting" by age, legal responsibility and parental skills (Youf, 2002). The choice with a Legal placement and it’s various forms (home placement, foster care, probation centers (open educational center, reinforced and closed) are written differently for the young and their education goals.

Second, probation center curriculum is a hybrid between legal prescription and adaptation in social context.

And finally, social-worker's practices adapting to young need are influenced by a lot of conception: a psychoanalyze conception for the psychologist, justice pedagogies conception for educator (Sallée, 2014 ; 2018), learning conception for teacher etc. How do justice professionals act in the local reality?

According to Carbonnier (2004), several interpretations are possible in the situation. The research question is : how does the context bring social workers to have a lot of diversity for practices to ‘implementing’ children’s rights ?

Answer :

H1 : an intuitive practice (Liefaard & Rap, 2016) are developed in open probation center

H2 : an « prudencielle » practice (Champy,  2012) are developed in closed probation center

This project overlap between two methodology areas (legal sociology and educational research). Legal sociology (Carbonnier, 2004) “observes” legal sources in practices. Data legal come from several sources. The first is an institutional source « journal officiel » for law, decree and measure. The second source is a historian database name criminocorpus. And finally, a legal actuality source of French child protection system by CNAPE - Federation nationale d'association. The ethnographic approach used in this educational research describes the curriculum and pedagogy about open and closed probation center. Educational data is observation participating by work meetings, ordinary life with social workers and young people for several weeks and discussions with managers and policymakers regional.

We will first present legal sources the children’s rights in center probation and choices by policymakers. Secondly, we will elaborate on the child's right as developed by social workers and young in two probation centers. In the third and final section, we will question four tensions of child's right to French juvenile justice : 1) the child’s right to effectively be informed and participate in the judicial process 2) this coexistence of different «adolescent's images » and constructions of adolhescenthood creates confusion and tensions for policymakers and social workers and 3) the need to investigate a ‘double perspective’ of tension between children’s rights and parent's right and the practice for implying professionals of juvenile justice.

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