Remand prisons which “overflow” and the State “which looks away”. In her annual report published on Thursday, the prison controller Dominique Simonnot curbs the “guilty inertia” of the government in the face of record prison overcrowding in France. “Inertia, definition: lack of activity, energy. State of what does not move or barely moves. Synonyms: apathy, immobility, inaction, ease”, attacks Dominique Simonnot in the foreword to this report which paints a very black picture of violations of rights in prisons but also psychiatric hospitals or administrative detention centers.
“Inertia is a wall against which the incessant alerts of the Comptroller General of Places of Deprivation of Liberty (CGLPL) come up against the deplorable state of the places he visits”, laments the former journalist of the chained duck. As an echo of her statements when she arrived at the head of this independent administrative authority, in the fall of 2020. She then warned that she did not want to “use as an alibi” and that she intended to see her recommendations, although non-binding, applied “with the greatest firmness”.
New peak in French prisons
“We will try to be fierce,” Dominique Simonnot also said in an interview with AFP. Almost three years later, the Comptroller General is still sounding the alarm as a new historic peak has just been reached in French prisons with 73,080 detainees on April 1 for 60,899 places, and an average occupancy rate which climbs to 142.2% in remand prisons.
This record overcrowding inflicts “prisoners to live three to a cell, 21 hours a day – in less than 1 m2 of living space per person – to be nibbled by bedbugs, invaded by cockroaches and rats”, recounts Dominique Simonnot. She forces “2,100 of them to sleep on a mattress on the floor”, she points out. The independent authority, she recalls, “recommends since 2017” the establishment of a prison regulation mechanism enshrined in law, which would make it possible to examine the possibilities of leaving a prisoner at the end of his sentence before to bring in other detainees.
A promise “smells rancid”
But “despite insistent steps (…), the public authorities do not seem determined to modify the rule of law”, regrets the CGLPL. She reprimands the “solution put forward by the State” to fight against the scourge of prison overcrowding, that of the construction of 15,000 new prison places by 2027. A “famous promise smelling rancid, since these 15,000 places were already proclaimed in 2017 for 2022 “and were” very modestly reduced, to 2,000 at the end of 2021 “, accuses the comptroller general.
The CGLPL, which is responsible for ensuring respect for fundamental rights in prisons, but also psychiatric hospitals, administrative detention centres, closed educational centers and police custody premises, carried out 115 inspection visits to establishments in 2022. In all these places of deprivation of liberty, the finding of the Comptroller General is also “very alarming”. Of all the findings contained in this 188-page report, “overhangs (…) the feeling of an abandonment of the State”, she criticizes.