The number of prisoners in French prisons increased in the last quarter with 61,102 people incarcerated on October 1 against 58,695 on July 1, according to figures from the prison administration published Thursday, October 29.
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These latest quarterly statistics cover the months of July and August, where judicial activity is traditionally slower and the number of detentions reduced, as well as September.
With 60,654 operational places in 188 French prisons, the overall prison density stood at 100.7% on October 1.
On May 11, after two months of confinement, it was less than 100% (97%), a situation unprecedented in twenty years.
The fear of an exponential spread of the Covid-19 epidemic in prison had prompted the authorities to take early release measures for some 6,600 prisoners.
These measures, combined with a decrease in delinquency during this period, had led to a spectacular drop in the number of prisoners, with 13,000 fewer.
A prison density of 114% in remand centers
They were 72,575 in mid-March, a new record for overpopulation, two months after France was condemned by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) for its chronic overcrowding.
On October 1, prison density reached 114.6% in remand centers, against 110.6% on July 1 and 138% in October 2019. It is 176.3% in Bordeaux-Gradignan, 168.9 % in Béthune and 154.9% in Villepinte.
More than 6,400 prisoners are held in a structure that is over 150% overcrowded.
The number of mattresses placed on the floor - one of the measures of overcrowding - has increased in three months, from 422 on July 1 to 587 on October 1.
The defendants, imprisoned pending trial, still represent a third of the number of detainees.
In order to prevent a second wave of the epidemic in detention, the Minister of Justice Eric Dupond-Moretti recalled on Friday, a week before the reconfinement, the need to "maintain as much as possible (...) a prison density compatible with the sanitary measures ”.
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