French Prison System Criticized
French prisons are dirty, overcrowded and run-down, the leading European human rights organization said in a scathing report issued Thursday.
The Council of Europe’s criticism of the French penitentiary and judicial systems dealt a fresh blow to Justice Minister Rachida Dati, who is facing open revolt by magistrates angry about her push for reform and a personal style that many of them consider abrasive.
The council’s commissioner for human rights, Thomas Hammarberg, said French policies on detention and immigration risked undermining basic rights. “Living conditions are still unacceptable for numerous detainees, who have to cope with overcrowding, lack of privacy, dilapidated facilities and substandard hygiene,” said Hammarberg, a former head of the Save the Children charity.
His report also raised an alarm about prison suicides, saying almost 100 French inmates had taken their own lives this year. “The high level of suicides in French prisons is a symptom of structural deficiencies in the penitentiary system,” he said. French prison guards threatened to strike last month over their working conditions following the rash of suicides. Dati caused consternation in the ranks of the judiciary when she questioned the role of the bench in one of the deaths. Some 530 magistrates signed a petition Wednesday demanding that Dati apologize, putting further pressure on the justice minister, who was once viewed as the star of President Nicolas Sarkozy’s cabinet.
According to data issued in October, French prisons held a record 63,185 inmates, in a system built to house 50,000. Hammarberg said the reasons for this overpopulation lay “mainly in the tougher stance taken in criminal sentencing and by increasingly resorting to incarceration.” He also criticized a recent law, championed by Dati, that allows for convicts to be held in prison indefinitely if experts believe they pose a danger to society, even after their official jail term expires. Hammarberg said the definition of danger was “not a clear legal or scientific concept.”