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This article looks at the use of the private sector in French prisons from 1987 onwards, and places it in perspective with the privatization of prison structures in the Anglo-Saxon world. It presents two main results. On the one hand, privatization in the penitentiary sector has different meanings depending on the national context. The French model (outsourced management or “gestion déléguée”) thus appears to be intermediate in comparison with the other countries studied: although less extensive than in the United States or the United Kingdom, outsourced management is now the model of reference for prison management and concerns a much larger proportion of the prison population than in its European neighbors. On the other hand, privatization does not mean that the state is disappearing: its prison administration subcontracts or outsources more than it withdraws completely. Specifically, the state has tended to shift its field of action towards contractualization and monitoring, thereby participating in the formalization and rationalization of the functioning of privatized prisons.