For the past thirty years, cultural activities in detention have kept increasing to respond to the impetus of successive agreements between the Departments of Justice and Culture. Among these, writing workshops and contests are very successful with both the inmates and the prison administration which do not hesitate to promote locally and nationally these initiatives led by associations and foundations. Yet the productions of incarcerated individuals struggle to get beyond the walls of prisons, to fit into the book industry and to meet an audience. This work demonstrates links between the development of writing workshops and contests in prison and the publication of the texts written in this context; through a study combining observations of the implemented actions, analyses of prisoners’ creative writing, and interviews with multiple stakeholders.