It’s an apocalyptic picture. In her annual activity report – which is to be presented on Thursday May 11 at a press conference – Dominique Simonnot, the general controller of places of deprivation of liberty (CGLPL), describes a situation where there is a “guilty inertia” and where the conditions of detention are deplorable.
A severe observation established from 115 inspection visits to establishments carried out in 2022, i.e. twenty-eight penitentiary establishments, twenty mental health establishments, ten hospitals receiving persons deprived of their liberty, five administrative detention centers and waiting areas , three closed educational centers, five courts, forty-three premises for police custody and customs detention, and a forced removal procedure.
With a particularly free tone for this kind of exercise, Mme Simonnot denounces an unlivable reality made possible by a “short-term calculation, without vision or realism, responding to populism with incantations and bicep rolls”. The Comptroller General therefore considers that “our society tolerates what, in many respects, is akin to ancient corporal punishment”.
The former journalist spares no one, pointing out the “magistrates, who too often give in to the ease of locking up” that “chosen ones, who know the state of our prisons and constantly call for more revenge and confinement”, or “the state, which looks away”. She is sure of it, “France will not escape new European condemnations”. And concludes: “It’s sad to say, but the feeling of an abandonment of the State floats above these observations. » However, she does not deny lean “hopes” that things change. It highlights in particular the visits of the presidents of the bar associations, as well as elected officials. For Dominique Simonnot, the more what she denounces will be seen, “the faster the chances of change advance”.
New incarceration record
The first point raised by the report is important: prison overcrowding and attacks on dignity in prison. With 73,080 detainees at 1er April and an average prison occupancy rate of 142.2%, France reached a new record for incarcerations. “None of the CGLPL’s visits to remand prisons and remand prison areas (the only ones affected by overcrowding) showed an occupancy rate of less than 135%, and three prisons had rates above 200 % at the time of the control », says the report, which refers to an unacceptable situation with regard to human rights. Life in prison then becomes untenable, since overcrowding has the direct consequence of violence, a lack of hygiene, obstruction of activities, work and education.
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