The house arrest of Meaux (Seine-et-Marne) is experiencing an occupancy rate 165% three years after its opening, according to unions. In this modern prison, where the showers and toilets are placed in separate cells and the administration had to add 110 mattresses. Nearly one in eight inmate sleeps on the floor. Unions CGT, FOR and UFAP organize a protest Thursday, May 22 Three workers were burned after an inmate set fire to his cell.
May 16, supervisors Bordeaux-Gradignan (Gironde) protesting against insecurity in denouncing an occupancy rate of 200%. A week earlier, several inmates from the prison of Saint-Quentin Fallavier (Isère) refused to return to their cells to protest against the new canteen, entrusted to a private company. The Secretary General of the UFAP, Stéphane Barraut denounces "Mix" in prisons. The prison administration moderates, emphasizing that there is no increase in incidents since the beginning of the year. Social workers of the prison administration has finally launched a protest against a constitutional reform.
With 63,645 inmates, the prison population is close, a few units near the record of 1 st July 2004. The amnesty law had then drop the figure to 58,000 the following month. The situation is different today. The absence of an amnesty in July 2007 and the introduction of minimum sentences for repeat offenders, in August, pushed up the number of inmates in 3000 in one year. Secretary General of Prison Management TF, Michel Beuzon further finds, "last year" , better enforcement of sentences for minor offenses: "You see people you only saw the last few years, coming for a short stay. " It is also concerned about the number of inmates who have "more place in psychiatric facilities. They do not support the closure and face a difficult promiscuity for everyone ".
The Minister of Justice insists on the progress of modification of sentences and on investments in electronic bracelet. At 1 st April , 3509 people were doing and their sentences outside prison, against 2519, a year earlier. Promise, though still not recorded in the parliamentary calendar, the Prisons Act should also facilitate the modification of sentences. The Chancellor stressed that the plan construction and renovation of 13 200 seats decided in 2002, is ongoing. In 2012, prisons should count 63 500 tickets ... the number of current detainees.
But the administration expects 80,000 inmates by 2017. The announcement, Monday, May 19, Rachida Dati, a decree to organize requests for individual cells was greeted with skepticism. "Some inmates do not want to be alone, but it is a minority," said Stéphane Barraut, the UFAP.
France was apprehended at the United Nations, May 14, the state of its prisons by Canada, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and Sweden. European Commissioner for Human Rights, Thomas Hammerberg, is visiting France. The long-awaited name of the controller General of places of detention could be unveiled on the occasion of this visit, which ends Friday, May 23
