Due to prison overcrowding, "849 prisoners are now forced to sleep on mattresses placed on the floor," said Minister of Justice Eric Dupond-Moretti on Monday in the chamber of the Senate.
The Minister of Justice intervened during the examination at first reading of a bill aimed at responding to the Constitutional Council's requirement to open an effective remedy to detainees, in order to be able to challenge their conditions of detention when they are are deemed unworthy.
A bill widely adopted by senators.
All the groups voted in favor of the text.
Only the PS group abstained, believing that "the account is not there".
The text provides under which conditions and according to which modalities a detainee can seize the judicial judge when he considers he undergoes conditions unworthy of detention, so that it is put an end to them.
The person in pre-trial detention will be able to seize the judge of freedoms and detention (JLD), the convicted person who executes his sentence the judge of the application of sentences (JAP).
"I have one certainty, the one that accompanied me throughout my life when I was a lawyer and which, now Keeper of the Seals, requires me to act: the deprivation of liberty must not be - cannot be to be - a deprivation of dignity, ”said the minister.
"Because to deny the fundamental rights of imprisoned people is to challenge their very humanity."
READ ALSO>
Covid-19: clusters are multiplying in prisons in Ile-de-France
The health crisis "has generated an unprecedented reduction in the prison population", recalled the Minister.
"But since the resumption of judicial activity, the number of detainees has increased again: we have counted 5,000 more detainees since the first deconfinement," he said.
Minister condemns sentences of less than a month
"And 849 detainees are now forced to sleep on mattresses placed on the floor," he added.
"We must therefore put in place a coherent and proactive prison policy because we cannot lose this opportunity of a controlled penal population offering both better detention and working conditions for prison staff," he said. asserted.
Morning essentials newsletter
A tour of the news to start the day
Subscribe to the newsletterAll newsletters
According to the Minister of Justice, "the modifications of the sentence as soon as they are pronounced have very significantly increased from 3 to 11% in less than a year".
However, the minister noted that since the promulgation of the programming and reform law for Justice in March 2020 which prohibits prison sentences of less than one month, "227 de facto illegal sentences have all the same been pronounced".
"Every day, prison directors fear the transformation of their establishment into a cluster," laments Dominique Simonnot, the General Controller of places of deprivation of liberty in a forum published this Monday in Le Monde.
The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) had condemned France in a judgment of January 30, 2020 because of prison overcrowding.