Almost 8,000 cases of violence between prisoners per year on average, compared to 4,500 against staff.
It is this spiral that the new director of the Prison Administration intends to break.
Laurent Ridel thus wishes to initiate a major plan to fight against violence in prison "by the end of the year," he told AFP.
“Two thirds of the detainees are in prison for acts of violence, but the prison should not be a place of violence.
It is a place of law and the first of the rights is that of security ”, declares the one who took the head of the prison administration at the beginning of March.
Castigating those who, “for years, in an ideological way”, “opposed integration and security” while the two are “linked”, he believes that the fight against recidivism passes at the same time “by a work of prevention of violence ”and“ through social work to integrate people into society ”, in particular through education, training and work in detention.
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The bill of the Minister of Justice Eric Dupond-Moretti, adopted at first reading at the end of May in the National Assembly, includes a large section on work in detention and the rights of detainees, "essential" to reintegration according to the minister. "Without security, we can do all the activities we want, if the detainee is afraid of being racked in a corridor, he will never go," says Laurent Ridel.
The plan, which will have national “major axes” but will be tailored to the specificities of each of the country's 188 prisons, will be launched by the end of the year.
In the meantime, the prison administration wants to carry out a needs analysis and provide feedback on what is already being done: programs against violence in place in certain prisons, units for violent prisoners, "respect module" ( which allows detainees to move freely in detention under certain conditions).
The plan should also include a component on violence targeting prison staff outside the prison.
108% prison density
A difficulty will arise, admits Laurent Ridel: chronic prison overcrowding, which earned France a conviction by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in January 2020. “It's true that wanting to limit violence and promoting the right, in particular to dignity, in times of overcrowding, it's complicated ”. “This does not mean that we cannot do it”, notes the one who, with his 35-year career in the Prison Administration, has known “more time with overcrowding than without” and believes in “the policy of small steps ”.
The prison population has experienced a significant and unprecedented decline during the spring 2020 confinement due to a reduction in delinquency and early release measures taken by the government to prevent the spread of the Covid-19 epidemic in detention.
Organizations had called on the authorities to seize this historic opportunity, but the figures started to rise again in a few months.
As of May 1, there were 65,384 people imprisoned - for 60,799 operational places, or a prison density of 108%.
Between mid-March and mid-May 2020, the number of detainees rose from 72,575 to 59,463. "We were at less than 100% occupancy rate, it showed that we could do it," admits Laurent Ridel.
While the restrictive measures linked to the health crisis are gradually being lifted in prison as well, the prison director also calls for an acceleration of vaccination in detention - modeled on the calendar by age groups set up in outside. "We have necessarily fallen a little behind because we have a much younger population, with an average age of 34-35 years," he explains. About 12,000 detainees have already received a first injection. According to the latest figures, around a hundred detainees are currently suffering from Covid. The relatives of the detainees are impatiently awaiting the removal of the Plexiglas partitions in the visiting rooms. "The more people there are vaccinated, the more we can alleviate the constraints," promises Laurent Ridel.