“In the rooms, they can’t close the door, so there are people who come in at night. As the police don’t come in, it’s the law of the strongest that sets in”, says for example on franceinfo Dominique Simonnot the controller general of places of deprivation of liberty.
“The more the years pass, the more it deteriorates”, denounces Dominique Simonnot the general controller of places of deprivation of liberty, on franceinfo this Thursday, after the publication of a report on four administrative detention centers (CRA) for immigrants in an irregular situation. His document, published this Thursday in the Official Journal, targets the CRAs of Lyon 2, Mesnil-Amelot, Metz and Sète, which are judged “affront to dignity” human.
What did you discover by visiting these four CRAs?
We have discovered what we keep discovering, but which the Ministry of the Interior, alas, leaves unanswered. Following our recommendations, despite commitments each time to change things. What we see, obviously, it gets worse over the years, because when we talk about degraded premises, the more the years pass, the more it deteriorates. The CRAs are entrusted to the guard of police officers, but the police officers are not guards. The last CRA that was created is that of Lyon. It’s supposed to be the CRA of the future but, even more than the others, it shows a very carceral organization. In the specifications, the police must cross the detainees as little as possible. This means that there is a kind of distrust and fear that settle on both sides. When people don’t talk to each other, it results in violence. There is a lot of violence in the current CRAs.
Have you also noticed other huge shortcomings?
Totally. There are places, for example, the people in the rooms, where there are three or four of them, cannot close the door, so there are people who come in at night. Since the police do not fit into what are called these “living areas”, the law of the strongest prevails. They weave sorts of vines or ropes with sheets to block off the entrance a little, to understand when someone enters their room, because they are afraid. There is no distinction between the bathroom doors and the bedroom doors, so you can enter a room believing you are entering the toilet. In addition, the toilets do not close from the inside, it is not very pleasant.
The detainees are hungry. The planned rations are not in conformity. We weighed the bread. When 100 grams of bread is provided, there are only 80 grams on the meal tray. It’s still ugly to save on bread.
And it’s repulsively filthy in the rooms we call “sideline”, which however are intended for people who would have caused serious disturbances and who would have endangered the lives of the other detainees. We have seen people who, after suicide attempts, were put on the sidelines, sometimes for 108 hours in a row. Something devastated me at the Lyon CRA. There were swastikas drawn on the walls with excrement, alongside other graffiti for that matter, and no one had thought to clean up this excrement. When I mentioned it to the zone manager, it seemed to fall from the sky. A pestilential smell emerges from there. When you think that there are people who spend hours and hours without it being cleaned, it’s a bit staggering.
You passed this information on to the government. Did you get an answer?
No answer. We had had enough of our recommendations not being followed up, so we decided to take four CRAs that we found symptomatic and we made the recommendations for the four. I do not know what the government can answer, but I await its answer impatiently.
There are more and more people in the CRAs, while the prospects of removal are diminishing. Have you noticed that we are no longer given the figure for OQTFs (obligations to leave French territory)? I think it’s because we could make the ratio between the number of effective removals from the territory and the number of obligations to leave. I know, from the police, that we are at less than 10% of the rate of removal, which is relatively very low.
Is this a problem of financial and human resources or of a more global approach to what an administrative detention center should be?
I believe there is a bit of everything. If our fellow French citizens were treated in foreign countries the way foreign nationals are treated here, I don’t think we would be very happy. There is a problem of means, because, for example, although the specifications provide for 2 hours of cleaning per day, half an hour is done. I don’t understand why we don’t force dealers to respect the specifications. And then, there is this diplomatic problem with the countries of return which do not take back their nationals. So when I hear political parties say “with us there would be 100% returns”, it’s wrong. And when I even hear the government claim that today “there will soon be 100% returns”, that’s also false because it depends on the countries of return.