“The government lacks the courage to take matters into its own hands,” laments the general controller of places of deprivation of liberty

The number of prisoners has never been so high in France. On April 1, 77,450 people were incarcerated, an increase of 6% in one year, for 61,500 places. Dominique Simonnot, the general controller of freedom privatization places, talks about a figure “terrible”and points to the responsibility of public authorities: “The government lacks the courage to take matters into its own hands and reduce the prison population.”

Suicides, cell fires, “There are dramas every day”, assures Dominique Simonnot. There are regularly three detainees per cell, and 3,300 sleep on mattresses on the floor, forcing them to “put toilet paper in your ears and nose to prevent cockroaches from entering their orifices”, she says. Conditions which “drive you crazy” prison guards, “we force them to do a bad job”.

To try to relieve congestion in French prisons, Dominique Simonnot calls for favoring other sanctions “which allow sentences to be carried out more intelligently”, by learning a trade for example, as is the case in Germany. Or by learning to read or write, since in France, 16% of prisoners are illiterate, points out the ex-journalist, who emphasizes that every day, 110 euros are spent on each prisoner. Dominique Simonnot also regrets the system put in place during confinement, when prisoners were able to be released before their sentence.