Student support for prisoners

In 1976, during a decade marked by violent riots in prisons, Lionel Stoléru, technical adviser under the Presidency of Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, proposed creation of a national student association focusing on classes for people in prison. Genepi was set up on May 26, 1976. The idea was to create a link between students in higher education and the prison population. The nonprofit focuses on two avenues. While raising civil society’s awareness of prison issues by means of events organized in junior and senior secondary schools, distribution of questionnaires, film-debates, lectures, exhibitions or the reconstitution of 9 sq.m. cells in the public space, Genepi also trains students from all fields of education to provide homework support for prisoners (learning a language, remedial courses in areas of knowledge that need to be revised, discovery of new activities, etc.) or organize socio-cultural activities in prisons. These student volunteers are active in almost 80 penitentiary establishments. Every year, almost 1,300 of them work in prisons.