The benefit of the dramatic decline in the number of inmates during the first confinement was cleared in eighteen months. France has 69,448 incarcerated persons, or 11% more in one year. The penitentiary administration is preparing for a particularly difficult year before the delivery of new prison places in 2023.
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The occupancy rate of 100% in French prisons will have been a spring mirage. Today they find the level of overpopulation they knew two years ago, on the eve of the irruption of the Pandemic of Covid-19. At 1 January 2022, France had 69,448 detainees, according to the Ministry of Justice. It’s 11% more in one year, but 1.7% less than 70,651 of January 2020.
The dramatic decline in the number of inmates observed between March and June 2020, provoked by the release of some 6,000 people a few weeks of the end of their sentence and especially the judgment of the courts during the first confinement and so news incarcerations, is erased. Justice has not managed to seize this “historic chance”, as Nicole Belloubet had qualified when Eric Dupond-Moretti succeeded him at the Ministry of Justice in July 2020, which had allowed the number of detainees to match the number of detainees with that of the places available.
According to the Penitentiary Administration Department, 12,561 detainees are now overnamed in relation to the places available in prisons that shelter them. Thirty-six establishments have a density of more than 150% and a handle even exceeds the 200%, such as the Bordeaux-Gradignan Penitentiary Center, with 728 detainees, or the Nîmes’ house (407 detainees).
The Hopes of the Ministry of Justice to see the reform of the sentences entered into force in 2020 produce its effects to curb, failing to stop, the inexorable increase in the incarcerated population will have been short-lived. The new electronic surveillance home detention sentence created by law Belloubet to replace small penalties does not recipe. As of September 30 (last available number), 1,363 people were concerned. The use of the electronic bracelet at the plan of prison planning continues for its part to increase. At 1 January, 13,133 people were carriers, with exit schedules controlled by justice, or 14% more in two years. But this increase is not translated by a lesser remedy to prison.
Decrease in semi-freedom investments
On the other hand, other forms of planning, yet encouraged by criminal policy circulars do not seem to be interesting magistrates. The semi-freedom investments, imposing the person sentenced to return every night in his penitentiary establishment, do not take off. The average occupancy rate of these semi-freedom centers is 65% when it reaches 135% in stops, these prisons reserved for short sentences and remand persons.
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