The “most ambitious prison real estate program in 30 years”. This is how the Department of Justice present on its site the 15,000 prison places plan. This “should make it possible to reduce prison overcrowding for better care of prisoners by the prison administration,” the ministry proudly announces. But this ten-year plan, launched in 2017 by Emmanuel Macron, is seriously delayed. Worse: the objective will not be achieved, announced this Sunday, November 10, the Minister of Justice Didier Migaud. “There are projects which are completely blocked”, conceded the Minister of Justice, guest of France Inter, France Télévision and of the World.
Only 4,500 new places have been delivered, the chancellery tells AFP. While 7,000 places should have been delivered by the end of 2022, only 2,441 had been built, of which “a certain number were part of construction programs announced in 2012 or 2014”, underlined Patrick Hetzel in a report from the finance committee of the National Assembly tabled on this subject in 2023, as L’Express detailed in its columns last October.
The current Minister of Higher Education and Research specified that “only around 400 open places are attributable to projects launched from the end of 2018”. Of the 8,000 places supposed to be built between 2022 and 2027, the rapporteur was not more optimistic. “Everything therefore suggests that this deadline will not be met and that a significant remainder of places will be delivered by 2029 or 2030,” he estimated.
An “inexorable procrastination”
On the subject of planning the construction of prisons, special rapporteur Patrick Hetzel spoke of “inexorable procrastination”. This delay would not be due so much to a lack of funds as to “land difficulties” and “opposition from elected officials” to seeing closed educational centers or semi-freedom centers built on their territory. , according to the Minister of Justice. “Many elected officials are demanding new places, but refuse to allow them to be built in their own country,” the former Minister of Justice, Jean-Jacques Urvoas, also noted last October with L’Express.
“I will make proposals to the Prime Minister so that we can partly make up for this delay but we will not make up for it by 2027,” declared Didier Migaud, announcing the establishment of a “truth operation” on the “plan 15,000”. The Minister of Justice also declared that he would make proposals to Parliament to be able to use “exceptional procedures” in order to override local opposition, “when it comes to establishments of national interest”.
As of October 1, 2024, the number of prisoners in France reached a new record with 79,631 people incarcerated, compared to 78,969 the previous month, with a prison density of 127.9%. This even reaches more than 200% in certain establishments, such as the Bayonne remand center. France is among the worst performers in Europe in terms of prison overcrowding, in third position behind Cyprus and Romania, according to a study published in June by the Council of Europe.