Criminology has a long history of trying to understand why people reoffend. People that are released from prison offer us the opportunity study the conditions under which some individuals continue to commit crimes and others do not in great detail. Although research in the last years have incorporated the context as a source of influence on recidivism, much of the literature has focused on attributing the explanations solely on the level of the individuals themselves. Taking this individualistic perspective as my point of departure, I take some steps towards incorporating effects of the environment and aspects associated with social influence and learning in explaining why people re-offend (after being released from prisons). Studying the Chilean prison system, I first establish individual factors associated with recidivism, then account for prison environment and characteristics, to finally attempt at accounting for larger community effects. This was done by analysing data from a cohort of offenders who served sentences in Chilean prisons. Individual factors associated with time until recidivism were analysed using Event history models. Then, multilevel models were used to account for prison-specific effects: the exclusive contribution of prison to recidivism. Finally, hierarchical spatial models were used to analyse how space can be associated with varying levels of recidivism. In addition to the effects of individual characteristics, strong evidence of prison-specific effects was found, which implies that individual propensity towards recidivism is not independent of the prison where the sentence is served. In other words, differences in prison settings have the potential to impact on the individual likelihood of re-offending either by reducing or incrementing the individual risk. Likewise, evidence of spatial clustering of recidivism was also found, which indicates that recidivism has also a spatial component operating beyond the individuals' control. The main contribution of this thesis lies in demonstrating that recidivism implies a complex system of interdependence between different actors and institutions, which needs to be considered to understand recidivism in a larger context. These findings have profound theoretical and policy implications, as they imply that the responsibility for recidivism falls not only on the offenders themselves but also on the wider context of the justice system's institutions and society itself.

Il s'agit d'une recherche en trois parties.I « Quatre prisons : terrains, cultures et méthodes ». J'y décris les quatre centres pénitentiaires qui constituent le terrain de recherche et les difficultés que j'ai dû y surmonter. J'aborde aussi le rôle familial dans la formation de la contre-culture des détenus, la socialisation, et surtout l'éducation. Ils ont une stratification sociale alternative, suivent un code éthique qui leur est propre et ont des coutumes représentatives qui incluent l'argot carcéral (verlan).La méthodologie utilisée est qualitative. J'ai réalisé dix ateliers d'écriture entre 2008 et 2013 : un atelier avec les détenus du CIP-CRC (Centre de détention provisoire – Centre de régime fermé), cinq avec les détenus du CET (Centre d'Etudes et de Travail), un avec les détenues de la Prison de Chillán et trois au CCP El Manzano de Concepción (un atelier avec des hommes et deux avec des femmes). Grâce à ces ateliers, il m'a été possible de découvrir et de connaître leur contre-culture, ses codes, les valeurs qui lui sont propres.Le traitement des 112 récits produits consiste d'abord à les classer, à les organiser et à en donner une vision d'ensemble : coordonnées (auteur, époque), genre etc. A partir de là, on aborde les récits en utilisant la technique AT.9 afin de mettre au jour le «contenu existentiel » ou tonalité affective des idées et sentiments exprimés, selon une tendance vitale (positive-vie) ou morbide (négative-mort). On détermine également « le locus de contrôle » de chaque récit et son impact. Puis est envisagée l'articulation culture dominante/contreculture ; il s'agit ici d'utiliser les observations et les entretiens réalisés comme principale matière d'analyse, ainsi qu'une tranche des ateliers d'écriture.II « Incarcération et mémoire/imaginaire » présente les origines, l'historique, le texte et le contenu des 112 récits autofictionnels produits dans les des ateliers d'écriture. Les ateliers étaient organisés de manière à ce que chaque détenu prenne conscience, en fin de parcours, de sa progression tout au long de l'écriture et qu'il perçoive l'écart entre le dénouement finalement retenu pour son récit et celui qu'il avait envisagé au début ; il lui fallait pour cela confronter les divers dénouements envisagés successivement.Une condensation typologique des récits est proposée pour préparer la lecture de l'intégralité du corpus recueilli, qui constitue le cœur de cette recherche et donne une vision suggestive de la vie affective et de l'imaginaire des hommes, des femmes et des mineurs qui vivent aujourd'hui en prison au Chili. On s'interroge ensuite sur les méthodes et les fins d'une analyse des récits qui permette d'expliciter leur contenu existentiel, fasse apparaître les récurrences thématiques ; l'on propose enfin la lecture expérimentale de quelques récits.III « Caractérisation des systèmes de réclusion » traite des différences entre les systèmes carcéraux chiliens, des caractéristiques de la condition carcérale, du monde des détenus et des personnels. On aborde les caractéristiques socioéconomiques de la région du Bío–Bío, étant donné que cette dernière est le cadre où se développe la recherche. On met l'accent sur l'organisation de la vie en détention, la stratification sociale carcérale et sur l'utilisation des espaces en prison. On s'intéresse aussi aux variations dans le rôle des gardiens de prison et des personnels civils au Chili, selon les types de centres pénitentiaires étudiés et selon la diversité de leur mode de gestion. L'objectif est de formaliser les relations dans les divers centres étudiés en faisant apparaître différences et similitudes. / My report on this research is composed of the following three parts.I. Four prisons: their locations, their cultures, their methods.I begin this work by describing the four incarceration centers in southern Chili, where I conducted my research and the difficulties which I had to overcome in order to complete this work. My approach to this study includes the roles played by the families of detainees in the formation of their counter-cultural values, their socialization, and above all their education. The people I studied represent an alternative stratification, with their own ethical code, their unique customs, and their own prison slang.The principle method used in this research is qualitative. I led ten writers' workshops between 2008 and 2013: one with the prisoners at CIP-CRC (Center of Provisional Detention-Center of Firm Incarceration), five with the prisoners at CET (Center for Work and Study), one with the inmates at Prison of Chillán, and three at the CCP El Manzano of Concepción ( one workshop with male prisoners, and two with female prisoners). From my experiences in these ten workshops, I was able to discover and eventually comprehend the counter-culture of these inmates, their code of behavior and their system of values.My approach for studying the 112 naratives produced in these workshops consists of, first classifying them; then organizing them according to their global characteristics, such as contact information, the life of the author, the period described in the story, the genre etc…. After this initial work, I employed the AT.9 technique in order to uncover the ‘existential content' or the ‘affective tonality' of the ideas and feelings expressed in these stories, according to either the evidence of a vital energy or a morbid expression. I sought, also, to locate the “locus de contrôle” (control place) in each story to explain its impact.II. Incarceration and Memory/Imagination.In this part, I present the context and the history of the narratives that were produced in these prison writers' workshops and the content of these 112 fiction stories written by prisoners. These workshops were organized in a way that by the end of the process each prison inmate became conscious of the progress he had made during the project, and each was able to perceive the difference between the ending finally chosen for his story and that which he had considered at the start. To accomplish this, the writer needed to confront the various possible outcomes as they were considered in turn during the writing process.Here, I have proposed a typological summary of the stories to help prepare an approach to this corpus of collected naratives, which constitute the heart of my research and provide a vision the affective life and the quality of imagination of men, women and children who are incarcerated today in the prisons of Chili. I then take up the questions of the method and the purpose of this analyses, which seek to clarify their existential content of prison narratives, showing thematic recurrences. Finally I propose the experimental reading of a few of these stories.III. Characterization of the System of Incarceration.In this final part, I describe differences within the system of incarceration in Chili, including descriptions of conditions specific to certain institutions, as well as the universe of the inmates and the person guards. I present the socioeconomic conditions that exist in the Bio-Bio region of southern Chili, as this is the framework in which my research was developed. I emphasize the way in which the prisoner's life is organized, the social stratification of the prison and the utilization of space within the institution.