Prison universe in all France in discomfort

Each day of the requests for medical care are completely assumptions of responsibility, a prisoner waits 15 days for an urgency under unworthy detention conditions, the supervisors are with end, of violences, overpopulation, insalubrity and nothing to the standards: here is the batch of any prisoner.

The prison of Fleury Mérogis, more the big house of stop of Europe with 4,100 prisoners, had to deplore in one month four suicides and two deaths.

A prisoner, who needed medical care, was not dealt with in time, he had seen a doctor which had not detected anything, then his discomfort had begun again during the night and his/her companion of cell did not succeed in joining a doctor of guard.

Behind the bars, the general medicine is disaster victim. Fleury Mérogis, is however one of the establishments the least badly equipped as health professionals, it there has a doctor of guard all the night, but still is necessary it that it available and is especially called by the supervisors, however declared François Bès, coordinator of the pole investigations at the International observatory of prison (OIP).

A prisoner imprisoned for short sorrow a 2 months was coiled blows his exit day before during a walk for seems it a debt related to a business of narcotics. He died a few days later of the continuations of his wounds. These two dramas will be the object of investigations, however declared François Bès.

In the prison universe, in all France deaths and the suicides are not that the prerogative of Fleury Mérogis, with the prison of Seysse, in Toulouse, a suicide took place mid-April, as well as on April 18th with the prison of Arras.
These deaths reveal dysfunctions of the prisons whose organizations of control and associations of the human rights often repeat.

Among the objectives: “to restore the confidence of our fellow–citizens in our justice”. “The state of our jurisdictions and our prisons does not answer waitings of the citizens”, the government bill underlines. Chance of the calendar, the direction of the prison authorities announced Thursday, April 19 a new record of prisoners in the French prisons.

These serious events which have occurred in prison illustrate discomfort affecting the prison universe in France. Rapes are registers every 5 minutes, of violences and the aggressions are alarming.  With 70,367 people held in France at April 1st, a figure record, the number of defendants has been with most for 12 years, while overpopulation in prison reaches 118%.

The OIP thus communicated in April on several problems. It noted that the Minister for Justice had not really answered Sénatrice Esther Benbassa which had alerted it on cases of ill–treatment of the prisoners by supervisors with the prison of Villefranche and denounced by several organizations of control.

With the prison of Fresnes, one notes conditions of walk without monitoring nor water supply points or urinals, of the courses to the too reduced surface. The administrative court of Melun judged on April 6th that a prisoner who had seized justice so that the court is put at the standards was right and that the prison should have made renovation work.

A rather remarkable episode: toilet paper is rationed for the poor people, according to the tweet of a woman doctor intervening in prison.

The Committee of prevention of torture will inspect the prisons in France in 2019 in order to evaluate the way in which the prisoners are treated. 7,500 additional places were promised by Emmanuel Macron during his five–year period on the 15,000 promised initially. The president of the Republic wishes a justice which gives up the prison preference for other “punishments”, partly inspired by the countries of the north of Europe.

The day before the presentation of the reform of justice by the Keeper of the Seals Nicole Belloubet, these serious events which have occurred in prison illustrated discomfort affecting the prison universe in France. The Minister for Justice presented this Friday, April 20 as a Council of Ministers his vast project of reform of justice, very criticized by lawyers and magistrates, who reproach him for weakening the rights of the defence and for limiting the access to the judge.

The question of the budget of justice is omnipresent. According to the USM, it accounts for 1.8% of the French budget public, which places France in the 23rd place on 27 countries in the European Union. The government bill of programming provides that it passes from 6.7 billion euros in 2017 to 8.3 billion in 2022.

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Gabriel MIHAI

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