Bedbugs, overcrowding, “humiliation” … The prison controller denounces “unworthy” conditions at the Perpignan remand center

The prison controller is sounding the alarm. In a June 6 document made public on Wednesday July 5, Dominique Simonnot asks the government to quickly improve the conditions of detention at the Perpignan remand center, which she considers “unworthy”. “Endemic overpopulation”, “humiliations”, “ubiquitous cat urine smells”the controller also recommends “guarantee protection” prisoners, threatened by other prisoners.

She also denounces “integral excavations” systematic unjustified and under conditions “proper to accentuate humiliation”, citing unsuitable, sometimes glazed premises, or requests to squat. According to Pierre Grousset, secretary of Ufap-Unsa, the establishment’s first union, “Last week, we went from 86 to 67 mattresses on the floor, but now it’s going up, we’re up to 72”.

Insufficient maintenance

Dominique Simonnot also points to insufficient maintenance, due to a lack of human and material resources, which partly explains the poor state of the facilities: mold on the walls, lack of partitions between the sanitary facilities and the rest of the cell, missing windows, etc. This maintenance needs to improve “without delay”including for “eradicate bed bugs” of which are “infested” the cells, emphasizes the controller.

For his part, the Minister of Justice, Eric Dupond-Moretti, recognizes that prison overcrowding in Perpignan constitutes “a major problem”. But, in his written responses to this independent administrative authority, he recalls that more than 600 detainees benefited from sentence reductions between January and May. Regarding the excavations, he mentions a “reminder of the regulations” carried out in mid-April by the head of the establishment and new measures to better protect prisoners “vulnerable”.