The Keeper of the Seals presented his project to the Council of Ministers on Wednesday, while prison density figures have not been so high since 2009.
Ten months after the publication of the final report from the Estates General which deplored justice “on the verge of breaking” , the major project to renovate Eric Dupont-Moretti’s judicial system has finally been launched. The Keeper of the Seals presented to the Council of Ministers, Wednesday, May 3, his programming and orientation bill, the examination of the text of which should begin in Parliament in June.
One of the flagship measures of this 7.5 billion euro project concerns the creation of 15,000 additional places in prison by the end of the five-year term, with the aim of stemming prison overcrowding which has reached levels record in recent months. “Ten new prisons will open their doors by the end of the year. Half will be operational in 2024″said the Keeper of the Seals in an interview published this Wednesday in the newspaper 20 minutes .
If the implementation of the “15,000 plan” is progressing, it is significantly behind schedule, underlined the Court of Auditors. “At the end of 2022, a total of 11 establishments were delivered (i.e. (…) 2,441 net places, once the closures of dilapidated establishments are taken into account), while 16 establishments are under construction. The 7,000 places which were to to be delivered before the end of 2022 have therefore not been built in full”she explains in her annual report published in April.
Overcrowded prisons for decades
According to the latest figures published by the Ministry (PDF)73,080 people were detained for only 60,899 operational places on April 1, 2023, i.e. a prison density of 120%. This figure rises to 142 , 2 % in remand prisons. The number of detainees is on the rise in French prisons for the third month in a row. The previous peak, in December 2022, was 72,836 detainees. France is one of the European states whose prisons are the most overcrowded, as highlighted by the site vie-publique.fr.
Prison overcrowding is a chronic evil that is not new. Going back in time, we observe that the number of detainees incarcerated has always been greater than the number of places available over the period 1990-2023, with the exception of 2001. prison density increase to 98%.
The year 2021 also saw an exceptional decrease in its prison population, which fell from 116% to 103% in one year due to Covid-19 and its successive confinements. The explanation comes for half of sharp slowdown in prison entries and for the other half of the strong acceleration of releases.
As of January 1, 2023, prison density stood at 119%, a level that had not been reached since 2009. Result: more and more prisoners are sleeping on mattresses on the floor in unsanitary conditions. According to the same figures, they were 2 151 without a fixed bed on April 1, 2023 against 1,878 on the same date in 2022.
Prune Missoffe, head of the International Observatory of Prisons, deplored a “situation that keeps getting worse, month after month”despite warnings about “dramatic conditions of overcrowding” in French prisons. This situation had earned France a conviction before the European Court of Human Rights in January 2020.