How should you treat a prisoner? Which protocols must be followed to the letter, and which allow for some flexibility? And how closely does reality match what you are taught at school?
Over the course of six months, we follow trainees as they learn to navigate the moral minefield of prison life. Throughout the film, filmmaker Guillaume Massart remains inside the walls of the Administration Pénitentiaire school, where theory classes on ethics and power relations alternate with practical exercises in empty cell blocks. We hear about what takes place inside the cells through conversations between the trainees and their instructors. They reveal that it is not only detainees who can be unpredictable, but your own colleagues as well.
Using an observational style, Detention presents the prison system as a complex web of strict rules, tactical considerations, and human shortcomings. The more the newcomers find their way through it, the better you understand what it takes to do this work.
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