They suffocated all summer without being able to open the window of their cell: seven detainees from the Baumettes penitentiary center obtained, on Tuesday, from the Marseille administrative court the appointment of an expert responsible for verifying the sanitary conditions of their detention. The prisoners denounce the installation, in 2019, of anti-noise windows in 87 cells of the women’s quarter in order to reduce the noise pollution of Baumettes 2, a prison commissioned in 2017, of which the neighborhood regularly complains.
This device consists of a fixed glazed part and an opening part but which opens onto a metal plate pierced with holes with vents on the outside. Several detainees were sanctioned this summer by the prison administration for having degraded them. Their testimonies were attached to the request filed by their lawyer Emmanuel Docteur. “I feel like I never have a new look,” said one. “I needed to breathe,” said another.
While these windows have reduced the nuisance denounced by local residents, they have been criticized by the general controller of places of deprivation of liberty in a report from March 2020. The controllers indeed recommended “an additional development that must imperatively and quickly be put in place to compensate for the effect of confinement and lack of air, while waiting for another system allowing the opening of the windows”.
A measurement of the fresh air flow to come
In a brief to the court, the Keeper of the Seals Eric Dupond-Moretti asked the court to reject this request for an expert’s report, stressing that “the supply of natural air from the acoustic frames complies with the regulations”. In her order, the judge in chambers notes that the instruction does not show that “the facilities and installations mentioned by the Minister (of Justice) would be sufficient to remedy in particular the lack of air and ventilation”.
The expert who will have to submit his report within four months will have to measure the minimum flow rate of fresh air per hour with regard to the health standards in force. Lawyer Emmanuel Docteur says he is already “satisfied with a decision which shows that the court is interested in the unworthy conditions of detention” of his clients. The Marseille lawyer only regrets that this expertise did not take place during the summer.
Following a visit to the establishment at the end of August, the chairman of the Marseille bar association, Jean-Raphaël Fernandez, declared in Provence “We will not be able, I believe, during summers and summers, to leave people with such high temperatures”.