It is dramatically see in the countries which are deprived of it: the mechanisms which guarantee the application of laws (control by justice, parliament and independent authorities) are powerful instruments of civil peace and democratic security. What to say, therefore, of a principle so fundamental that it has been inscribed in French law since 1875, that it has been solemnly recalled by the great texts adopted on the penitentiary issue … but which remains miserably letter? p>
Anyone held in a prison must be in an individual cell, affirms French law since the start of the III e Republic. Originally intended to encourage moral amendment to offenders and to ensure security, this principle of “individual praise” continues to be inscribed in our law out of respect for human dignity. It was devoted by law, especially in 2000, in 2009 and 2016, under right and left -wing governments. With the same regularity, parliamentarians have voted moratories referring to the Greek calendars the implementation of a rule however considered as one of the bases of human rights which we are releasing.
concerts of indignation
If it is true that “we cannot judge the degree of civilization of a nation by visiting its prisons”, as we say to Albert Camus, there is something to worry about listening to Dominique Simonnot, general controller of places of deprivation of freedom: in Bordeaux-Gradignan, where overcrowding reached 240 % during the summer of 2022, she saw “people with three per cell with 0.8 square meters of vital space by being human “. At night, the third detainee sleeps on a mattress on the ground, “forced to clog your nose with toilet paper to avoid sucking vermin”.
The indignation concerts have not been lacking for decades, And not only human rights organizations or the left. In 2000, the Senate report “Prisons: a humiliation for the Republic” had rocked the country. Nicolas Sarkozy denounced “a shame of the Republic” in 2009. And the Keeper of the Socialist Seals Jean-Jacques Urvoas proposed in 2016 to “end the prison overcrowding”. As for Emmanuel Macron, he promised in 2018 in a flamboyant speech to “get out of prison several thousand people for whom the prison is useless, even counterproductive”.
All these beautiful words forgotten as soon as pronounced never prevented the stack of vertiginous statistics on prison overcrowding, nor end-up between the number of detainees and the construction of new penitentiary establishments. In this area, “records” succeeded “peaks”: prisoners were 40,000 in the 1980s, 60,000 in the early 2010s, and they exceeded 70,000 from the 2020s. 000. The number of places has almost doubled in thirty years, but overcrowding, concentrated in remanding houses, intended for condemned to short sentences and people waiting for judgment, has continued to increase. The “establishments for pain”, reserved for sentences to sentences greater than two years, are managed in order to avoid overcrowding, for reasons of humanity and safety.
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