Marc’s story alone symbolizes the shortcomings of the medical follow-up of prisoners in France or even the total absence of care, as denounced by the latest report from the International Observatory of Prisons (OIP), published on Wednesday July 6. In March 2020, at the age of 46, he was imprisoned in a Lyon prison. He quickly obtained his transfer to the detention center of Casabianda-Aléria (Haute-Corse), which is betting on reintegration through work. In the summer of 2021, he feels a lump like an olive in his armpit, a sensation that becomes painful and grows in size. The prisoner tried for five months to see the prison doctor, to alert him, in vain.
>> Dental, ophthalmological, gynecological problems… A report by the OIP denounces the lack of access to specialized care in prison
“The doctor was not there or he gave him prescriptions without even seeing him, says Sophie, his companion for twenty years. Lots of Doliprane, Tramadol, which is a derivative of morphine, but nothing more than that. He was someone who wrote a lot when he still had the use of his arms: he wrote down all the requests he made, which were never heard. Until the moment when we said to him: OK, you have a place, it will last a few days, we give you a puncture and you come back. Except that he never came back. It was already far too advanced.”
Marc’s cancer is metastasized and at stage 4, that is to say inoperable. The inmate is living his last weeks. Sophie, his partner, promised him to file a complaint for, she says, “that no one has to suffer such injustice again”. In a damning report published on Wednesday July 6, the International Observatory of Prisons denounces these cancers diagnosed too late and warns more generally of the number of prisoners who do not benefit from the care they need. The text is also concerned about the budget allocated to health in prison. The envelope is calculated according to the theoretical number of prisoners when we know that there is currently a prison overcrowding of 120%.
The Observatory also points to the situation of dentists without radio equipment, reduced to the role of tooth-pullers. Or these physio sessions prescribed when there are no practitioners in the prison and which are replaced by analgesics. Many detainees themselves refuse to seek treatment. Because leaving prison, seeing a specialist, is risking humiliation and the violation of medical secrecy, as recounted by Anne Dulioust, recently retired after eleven years as a doctor at Fresnes prison (Val-de-Marne): “The means of restraint that are employed, either the handcuffs or the ‘leash’ [une entrave au niveau abdominal], make them not want to be seen by the public. Everyone sees them passing through the waiting room, accompanied by the police, and they prefer not to be treated than to be seen in these conditions which they consider degrading.”
“Some escort supervisors feel ‘invested with a mission’ and stay during the consultation. I have seen it for women who complained after a gynecological examination carried out in the presence of a male supervisor.”
Anne Dulioust, former doctor at Fresnes prisonat franceinfo
Some testimonies reported by the Comptroller General of Prisons in recent years show prisoners handcuffed even in an operating room or in the recovery room. The expression of the zeal of certain supervisors, to which many doctors turn a blind eye. There are also counter-examples: at Creil hospital, handcuffs and the presence of supervisors in consultation are exceptional and yet no incident has been reported.