For the Caen administrative court, the prison administration did not take the measures “that one could reasonably wait” to prevent the suicide of this prisoner with strong mental disorders.
Le Monde with AFP
a hundred thousand euros. This is the sum that the Caen administrative court ordered the State to pay, Tuesday, November 15, as compensation, to the family of a 26 -year -old detainee who committed suicide in Caen prison in Caen 2020. The court considered that the prison administration had committed a “fault” in the care of the young woman. Pauline Depirou, who suffered from serious mental disorders, had been found hanging in her cell from the Caen remand in the night of February 4 to 5, 2020.
Despite three preliminary suicide attempts, including one per hanging “only a few months before the reinforced surveillance” in December 2019, the young woman had been placed alone in a cell, the court noted in a decision made public on Tuesday . In addition, it was the subject of the same night surveillance regime as any detainee from the Caen remand center: three rounds per night “with eyelet control” on the cell door.
“a fault”
The prison administration was however aware of a legal expertise dating from 2017, which established “a highly pathological personality, structured in a psychotic mode”, with a persecutive syndrome, as well as its hospitalizations in psychiatry services from psychiatry his childhood. Between June 2018 and his death, Pauline Depirou had appeared twenty-three times in the disciplinary committee.
Despite all these elements, the prison administration “did not (…) have taken the measures that we could reasonably wait for from him to prevent the suicide of M me depirou. In These conditions, the prison administration committed a fault likely to engage the responsibility of the State, “writes the court.
The State must therefore “be declared entirely responsible for the harmful consequences of the suicide of M me Pauline Depirou” and pay more than 100,000 euros in damages to parents and to parents and The family of the deceased, he concludes.