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The Algerian War of Independence did not unfold solely on a military front, with the drafting and dispatching of troops, but also on a judicial front. As a result, in Algeria as well as in France, thousands of people—Algerian and French, men and women, soldiers and civilians—were sent to prison. Rather than examining the situation in penal institutions, this article focuses on carceral trajectories. Drawing on prison administration archives, prisoner files, and prison records, numerous interviews, personal archives, and former prisoners’ biographical accounts, the article shows that incarceration could be a mobile punishment. Prisoners were transferred from one carceral site to another, not just in France or in Algeria, but also between France and Algeria, and in both directions. This continuous movement, which demarcates a trans-Mediterranean space of repression and forced migration, can be explained by a state strategy of repression whose roots go back to the conquest of Algeria, but also by individual prisoners’ strategies of resistance and subversion. If each prisoner traces out a distinct carceral map, their common journey made public awareness of the situation possible, their passage through various prisons facilitating comparison and encouraging the fight for better detention conditions, while the practice of prison transfer itself ultimately allowed prisoners to beat the state at its own repressive game.