The maintenance of the teenage population mental retardation within this system, perversely, is facilitated by function of the institution, and in particular by the culture and the transmission of institutional violence through which it is regulated. This research proposes to demonstrate how the proximity and heterogeneity of the inmates, the complexity of the mission entrusted to the institution, the sanction of institutionalising a child, and the working conditions of the staff, all have resulted in a combination which is complex, pathogenic and intractable.