Tiny surfaces with prisoners crowded together… The Strasbourg administrative court condemned the State for “unworthy conditions of detention” at the Mulhouse remand center (Haut-Rhin). In its decision, dated November 16, the court recognizes the “moral damage” suffered by a detainee incarcerated from May 18 to June 27, 2018 in Mulhouse, and orders the State to pay 1,000 euros “in compensation”.
Out of 40 days of detention, the detainee had spent the first ten in a cell “reserved for new arrivals, with an area of 6.46 m2, which she shared with another detainee”. Then she spent 30 days in a cell with an area of 11.81 m2, which she shared with four other inmates.
The court highlighted “the overoccupancy of this last cell”, leaving each detainee “less than 3 m² of individual space, not counting the floor space of the furniture (bunk beds, table, chairs, toilets)”. He also points out the lack of real separation from the toilets, “thus prohibiting any form of privacy and inducing hygiene risks”, and notes the absence of a ventilation system.
On the arguments raised in defense by the Ministry of Justice, which reported “renovation work” completed at the remand center, the court points out that only “the creation of paintings in the passageways of the building, and not in the cells” is established. The detainee “was incarcerated in unworthy conditions […] for a total period of 40 days,” concluded the court.
The case was brought by the inmate’s mother, after the latter’s death in 2020.