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This paper analyzes issues concerning the psychic functioning of adolescent delinquents sentenced to Educative Detention Centers. The paths taken, courses of action and emotional links are problematic for these youths who are compelled by their detention to accept being distanced from their figures of reference. Should they let themselves be reduced to their acts or to the documents written about them in order to deal with this? Subjects of polysemic acts, they interpret their relations with their parents in different ways. The paper is based on clinical interviews with thirty-six adolescents in detention. Work on the bond will be necessary, and this work must be threefold, dealing with the family bond, the peer-group bond, and institutional bonds.