ABSTRACT
This chapter presents the general debate on the processes of radicalization and de-radicalization. It points to the need for a dialectical understanding of the relationship between the inside and the outside of the prison as the key-area of study for the processes of radicalization and de-radicalization. Firstly, It objects to those theories that conceive prisons as separated institutions ruled exclusively by special mechanisms and relationships. Secondly, the postulated great similarity between the sociopolitical structures of prisons and of early modern monarchical/imperial states and the equation of prison riots with microevolutions reveal the formalistic nature, its scarce contextualization and its denial of the agency of the historical actors. Thirdly, once the inside-outside relationship is considered, it cannot be looked at through an exclusively formal juridical perspective. If the intrinsic repressive nature of prison is not a static fact, then, the processes of radicalization and de-radicalization too cannot be looked at exclusively inside nor exclusively outside the walls of the penal institutions.
