Editing Jean Genet (section)

===Detention and military service===
For this and other misdemeanors, including repeated acts of vagrancy, he was sent at the age of 15 to [[Mettray Penal Colony]] where he was detained between 2 September 1926 and 1 March 1929. In ''[[Miracle of the Rose]]'' (1946), he gives an account of this period of detention, which ended at the age of 18 when he joined the [[French Foreign Legion|Foreign Legion]]. He was eventually given a [[dishonorable discharge]] on grounds of indecency (having been caught engaged in a [[Homosexuality|homosexual]] act) and spent a period as a vagabond, petty thief and [[Male prostitute|prostitute]] across Europe—experiences he recounts in ''[[The Thief's Journal]]'' (1949).