The controller of places of deprivation of liberty publishes her annual report this Thursday, May 11, 2023, the result of 118 visits and the analysis of more than 2,800 letters sent to her last year. Dominique Simonnot is once again sounding the alarm about the situation in prisons, hospitals, closed educational centers and other administrative detention centres. She denounces the inertia of the public authorities.
” The state seems asleep. The tone is severe from the first lines of the report. Our “ incessant alerts » collide with « a wall », denounces Dominique Simonnot who is particularly alarmed by the situation of children « placed in poorly or poorly controlled homes where violence often reigns, poorly supported in psychiatry for lack of caregivers. A sector that is sinking into crisis while the plan being prepared by the Ministry of Health lacks scale, regrets Dominique Simonnot who criticizes, moreover, the government’s plan to increase the number of closed educational centers while no complete evaluation of this device has been made.
► To listen also: “In some police stations, those in custody are placed in terrible conditions”
A new record
Regarding prisons, overcrowding is getting worse. With 73,080 detainees on April 1 and an average occupancy rate of more than 142%, France has reached a new record. “ There is no prison where no rights are violated », Laments the controller of the places of deprivation of liberty.
Same observation in the administrative detention centers where nothing is improving either. In particular, children continue to be locked up there despite the convictions of the European Court of Human Rights.