At 56 years old, the psychiatrist Cyrille Canetti, former head of the regional medico-psychological service (SMPR) of the Health prison in Paris, has just resigned from his post.
This figure of psychiatry in prison delivers a grim diagnosis.
Why did you leave your post?
CYRILLE CANETTI.
I couldn't find myself there anymore.
I have no problem with the prison administration, my difficulties were rather internal to the service, especially last year.
Relations were also difficult with the hospital group on which the SMPR depends.
I have seen behaviors that shock me and I have denounced them.
I am thinking, for example, of this young man who returned to detention after a stay in hospital and who was stung and shackled, not because he was ill but because he was recalcitrant.
I also think of this man in his thirties who suffers from a chronic psychosis and a neurological disease and who cannot help but commit petty crimes.
However, the psychiatrists who follow him consider that his case is more a matter of justice than of medicine.
Suddenly, he ends up in prison, where he masturbates on a walk and brushes the walls of his cell with his excrement.
It's incredible, there is only one psychiatrist to find him normal!
You have decided to report these facts ...
Yes.
I denounced these practices to the Comptroller General of Places of Deprivation of Liberty (CGLPL) and to the Defender of Rights.
I have been criticized for being an activist and for putting my ideas before treatment.
I could no longer stay in these conditions and I anticipated the non-renewal of my post by resigning.
But I would like to underline the remarkable work of my team, in particular the nurses, psychologists, occupational therapists and psychomotor therapists.
After having spent twenty-five years there, in what state do you leave the prison?
In a sad state.
The number of mentally ill incarcerated is appalling.
It is difficult to give figures, but, in some establishments, there are entire corridors that house people with severe psychiatric disorders.
I am talking about people whom one would not imagine elsewhere than in a psychiatric hospital, but which one finds behind bars or in the subway.
These people are so vulnerable that they are unable to get by outside where they multiply the offenses.
Isn't the problem the more global one of the state of psychiatry in France?
Morning essentials newsletter
A tour of the news to start the day
Subscribe to the newsletterAll newsletters
Human and financial resources are lacking, it is obvious.
But I would also say that there is an evolution in the practice of psychiatry which has moved away from a human approach to approach neuroscience.
The mentally ill person is seen more as a pest than as someone in pain.
I obviously do not discredit all my colleagues, but I still see an increasingly coercive practice.
The hospitalized inmate will be perceived as a threat with the fear of escape.
This influences its management.
READ ALSO>
"Each year, less than a hundred psychiatrists are trained in Ile-de-France"
Is it also a reflection of public and political opinion?
Yes.
Society is awaiting punishment.
Of course, I am concerned about the fate of the victims, but one thing must be remembered: our fellow citizens would be better protected by treating the sick rather than by imprisoning them.
For example, I am detainees involved in terrorism cases, manifestly irresponsible.
Still, I doubt anyone will ever take responsibility for freeing them.
What leeway does the prison have?
Any.
The prison administration does not have the choice of welcoming the public that is entrusted to it.
It does not matter whether the inmate is mad or not, and it also does not matter whether the establishment is full or not.
We must therefore be honest in saying that prison is the place where society puts its members with whom it no longer knows what to do.
Let’s stop talking about punishment and reintegration, but rather riddance.
READ ALSO>
Prisoners of madness: immersed in a prison psychiatric center
Who is responsible ?
Magistrates have a responsibility, because they are the ones who incarcerate.
In immediate appearance, judges do not necessarily give themselves the means to assess the situation of an accused before sentencing him.
But magistrates are also largely dependent on experts, but the current trend is not irresponsible.
Psychiatric experts diagnose very few abolitions of discernment, that is to say of penal irresponsibility.
I also think that they do not sufficiently assess the accessibility of an accused to the criminal sanction.
An accused responsible at the time of the facts, but who developed Alzheimer's disease when he is tried, has no place in prison.
Do you think the situation can improve?
Honestly, no.
The results of my twenty-five years in prison are a total failure.
Not at the level of the care of my patients, well I hope so, but at the level of the perception by society and the policies of the management of psychiatry in prison.
I have been auditioned dozens of times, but nothing has changed.