If it relies on parliament, the Ministry of Justice will have to review its copy on prisons. The government’s plan for the construction of 15,000 places by 2027 “already appears undersized”, indeed underlines a parliamentary report revealed by The chained Duck.
This budget report, dated May 25 and written by MP LR Patrick Hetzel, special rapporteur for the credits of the Justice mission of the National Assembly, comes as the number of detainees reached a new historic record on May 1, with 73,162 people incarcerated in French prisons.
Six prisons with an occupancy rate above 200%
Sign of this congestion, “in May 2023, the Gradignan penitentiary center temporarily suspended its admissions due to the congestion of its cells”, recalls the report. “This establishment, like five other French prisons, has an occupancy rate of more than 200%,” laments the report.
There is an “inability of the Ministry of Justice to reduce prison overcrowding and to guarantee people placed in the hands of justice conditions worthy of detention”, considers the deputy of Bas-Rhin. Recalling that many building programs have been launched since the end of the 1980s to create new places of detention, he notes that “these plans have never achieved the objectives assigned to them”.
Announced in 2018, the “15,000” program aimed to create 7,000 net places in 2022, to which should be added 8,000 net places in 2027. Its estimated cost is 4.5 billion euros. However, underlines the report, “as of December 31, 2022, only 2,441 new places had actually been put into service”. “This new failure can be explained both by structural factors, common to all prison building programs, and by weaknesses specific to this new program”.
France condemned by the ECHR
While of the 7,000 places announced in 2018, only 35% have actually been put into service, “delays are to be expected on the second phase of execution of the program”. “Of the 13,415 places remaining to be opened, the majority (7,360) are expected for 2027. Everything therefore suggests that this deadline will not be met and that a significant remainder of places will be delivered by 2029 or 2030”, details the report which also mentions “significant difficulties in recruitment” due to the “lack of attractiveness of the corps of prison guards”.
The chronic prison overcrowding, which continues to worsen, led to France being condemned in January 2020 by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR).