“Chiche”: faced with the crisis of prison overcrowding, the National Assembly gave the green light on Wednesday evening to the LR request to build 3,000 additional prison places by 2027, to the chagrin of the left.
The current program of “15,000” creations of places by 2027, launched in 2018, has been delayed and is “already undersized” according to a recent parliamentary report. Led by right-wing party boss Eric Ciotti, an amendment setting this target of 3,000 more places was approved during the first reading of the justice programming project.
Eric Ciotti had conditioned his favorable vote on the entire bill to the validation of such an increase in the number of places in detention, to reach a park of 78,000 places in 2027. Currently, “sanctions” of imprisonment “are not applied” for lack of places, so “the only solution is to build”, he argued in the hemicycle.
“Solemn appeal” by Dupond-Moretti to build detention centers
The presidential majority replied “poor”, emphasizing the issue of “dignity”, while more than 2,300 detainees sleep on a mattress on the floor due to prison overcrowding. But these deputies Renaissance, MoDem and Horizons made it clear that these 3,000 additional places would be made “subject to the issuance by the local authorities of the necessary planning authorizations”.
The Minister of Justice Eric Dupond-Moretti launched on this subject “a solemn, republican appeal, so that locally the attempts to obstruct” stop the construction of detention centers. It is always “prison yes, but elsewhere”, he pointed out. Likewise, with regard to closed educational centers, which LR would like to double by 2027: “too many elected officials are still reluctant to welcome (them),” said Dupond-Moretti. More generally, the minister defended his “criminal policy of firmness without demagoguery”.
73,699 people incarcerated, a record
Eric Ciotti and Olivier Marleix, leader of the LR deputies, had written earlier on Wednesday to Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne to demand a policy not “guided by managing the shortage but by the need to protect society from dangerous individuals and to enforce the rule of law”, after the recent urban riots, according to this letter consulted by AFP.
The left has strongly criticized these 3,000 more prison places: “The obsession with everything prison has struck”, lamented the socialist Cécile Untermaier. With Elsa Faucillon (PCF), she accused the presidential camp of “bargaining with the right” to get the bill passed. LFI pinned a “reactionary arc between Macronie, the right and the far right”. RN deputies brought the request from 7 to 10,000 additional places.
Another amendment from Eric Ciotti which requested temporary “modular accommodation” from 2024 was rejected. “Algecos as cells, it’s not very serious”, swept the rapporteur Erwan Balanant (MoDem).
With 73,699 people incarcerated, the number of detainees reached a new unprecedented peak on June 1 and for the fifth time in a few months.