“Endemic overcrowding”, “humiliation of detainees”, “ubiquitous smell of cat urine”: the general controller of places of deprivation of liberty (CGLPL) asks the government to quickly improve the conditions of detention in the remand center of Perpignan which she considers “unworthy”.
In a document of June 6, made public this Wednesday, it also denounces unjustified systematic “integral excavations” and under conditions “suitable to accentuate humiliation”. It also recommends “guaranteeing the protection” of detainees who are threatened by other prisoners. Recently, the Ufap Unsa Justice Perpignan union denounced the attack on a “media prisoner”, imprisoned in a cell with five other prisoners.
Dozens of mattresses on the floor
On April 3, notes the CGLPL, there were 315 detainees for 132 places in the men’s section. As a result, 67 slept on a mattress on the floor and, in the cells occupied by three prisoners, each had 0.84 m2 to “live and move”. According to Pierre Grousset, secretary of Ufap-Unsa, the establishment’s first union, “last week, we went from 86 to 67 mattresses on the floor but now it’s going up, we’re up to 72 “. “We cannot continue if the mattresses on the ground continue to rise again,” he said.
Éric Dupond-Moretti recognizes that prison overcrowding in Perpignan is “a major problem”. But, in his written responses to this independent administrative authority, headed by Dominique Simonnot, he recalls that more than 600 detainees benefited from sentence reductions between January and May.
infected cells
The CGLPL also points to insufficient maintenance, due to a lack of human and material resources, which partly explains the poor state of the facilities: mold on the walls, lack of partitions between the sanitary facilities and the rest of the cell, missing windows, etc. It must improve “without delay”, also to “eradicate bed bugs” with which the cells are “infested”, underlines Ms. Simonnot. “In this prison, it’s a crazy thing. The detainees are devoured in the cell. Now it is the guards who are being devoured in their kiosks and certainly that will proliferate in Perpignan, ”says Johann Reig, regional secretary of the Ufap-Unsa union.
In addition, according to the prison controller, “general unsanitary conditions are aggravated by the proliferation of pests”. “Waste of all kinds accumulates at the foot of the buildings, where they attract cats and gulls” and “the smell of cat urine is omnipresent” in several parts of the prison, she notes. Another concern of the CGLPL: “fire safety, compromised in a third of cells” in the men’s quarters, “where the electrical outlets are degraded, exposed electrical wires”.
Fourth most overcrowded prison
For his part, Mr. Dupond-Moretti puts forward “an emergency action plan” for the eradication of pests, including a “first disinfestation campaign” in early May. And he underlines “the favorable opinion” issued by “the fire safety sub-committee” on “the operation of the penitentiary center”.
With a prison density of 205.6% (i.e. 403 prisoners for 196 places), Perpignan is the fourth most overcrowded prison in metropolitan France, behind Nîmes (226%), Rochefort (211.5%) and Gradignan (206.9%). ). The Toulouse interregional directorate, on which the Perpignan remand center depends, has the highest prison density rate in France: 135.9%, ahead of Paris at 135.4%, the national average being 121.7% .