Résumé en anglais:Over the last decades, in Switzerland as well as in other European countries, the uprising of imprisonment issues has gained importance among policy responses to address juvenile delinquency. This uprising of penal confinement is followed up by a movement in apparent contradiction : juvenile detention centers have to show more dignity as well as more firmness in the treatment of juvenile offenders. The question of the relationships between the domestic world of confinement and the external world is at the heart of this reform. This paper is an on-the-ground account on the ways this question is experienced by professionals working in a juvenile detention center highlighting their forms of compliance, appropriation and resistance.