On October 1, 2022, the 188 French prison establishments had 72,350 prisoners, for 60,700 operational places. This overcrowding forces more than 2,000 people to sleep on a mattress on the floor. “The situation is catastrophic”alert this Monday on franceinfo Dominique Simonnot, general controller of places of deprivation of liberty.
franceinfo: Today 2,053 incarcerated prisoners sleep on a mattress on the floor, an increase of more than 39% compared to last year. What explains such an increase?
First of all, it is a lack of courage and political will not to enshrine in law a mechanism that allows the prison population to be regulated. The situation is catastrophic, especially in remand prisons, the most affected by overcrowding. Second, this overcrowding restricts inmates : it prevents access to activities, care, etc.
“We visit terrible places, first for the prisoners, but also for the guards who cannot work in these conditions.”
Dominique Simonnotat franceinfo
The Keeper of the Seals speaks of a deficit of 10,000 places, which should be filled by the construction program of 15,000 seats provided for 2027. For you, this can quickly solve the problem?
I doubt that these prison places will see the light of day. In Mulhouse, the Lutterbach prison was announced in 2009 and it finally opened in 2021. There are a lot of appeals, because of people who do not want a prison near their homes. Moreover, it is proven that the more prison places you build, the more you fill them. So it is better to turn to reintegration and prevent recurrence.
What could be the solutions to end this overpopulation?
Inmates spend months locked up like battery chickens. They have a living space that sometimes comes down to 0.8 m² per person, in which they live 22 hours a day. These are not favorable conditions for returning to a normal life. Alternatives must be developed, as in Germany, which is betting everything on sentences outside prison. With 20 million more inhabitants than us, they have 14 000 fewer detainees. I visited German prisons, there is one inmate per cell, that’s proof that we can do it.