The National Student Group for Teaching Prisoners (Genepi), an association which has supported prisoners for more than 40 years but which had already broken with the prison administration for several years, announced its dissolution on Monday, August 2. “We refuse to perpetuate an association which was not thought of as a tool in the fight against imprisonment and has never served the interests of prisoners”, Genepi said in a statement, rejecting the legacy of the movement.
PRESS RELEASE ON THE DISSOLUTION OF GENEPI ⬇⬇⬇ pic.twitter.com/umLpeZDXBZ
– Genepi (@GenepiFrance) August 2, 2021
The association, which had changed direction and now claimed to be an association “Feminist and anti-prisoner”, explains having arrived at the end of its logic “Abolitionist”.
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“We refuse to be satisfied with a reformist criticism of jail and justice, the only possibility heard by the State and the dominant discourse formulated by Genepi for more than 40 years”, pushes the current direction of the association into this text.
Created in 1974 by the public authorities
In fact, the prison administration had severed its links with the association in 2018 by not renewing the three-year agreement which provided it with subsidies. Since 2019, the Genepi, which had up to 850 volunteers in the early 2000s, had given up its historic activity of workshops or courses in prison.
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Created by the public authorities following the violent riots which had shaken the prisons, in particular during the summer of 1974, the Genepi also animated “Outside the prison” numerous seminars and awareness campaigns around the prison issue and the place of prison in society.
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