Detainees will soon be able to challenge unworthy detention conditions

The Constitutional Council demands that a remedy be opened for detainees The Senate is working on an appeal for detainees allowing them to challenge their conditions of detention when they are deemed unworthy. (Illustration) - MEIGNEUX ROMUALD / SIPA On Monday, the right-wing majority Senate urgently seizes a bill that will allow detainees to challenge their conditions of detention when they are deemed unworthy. Deemed insufficient on the left, this text aims to meet t

The Senate is working on an appeal for detainees allowing them to challenge their conditions of detention when they are deemed unworthy.

(Illustration) -

MEIGNEUX ROMUALD / SIPA

On Monday, the right-wing majority Senate urgently seizes a bill that will allow detainees to challenge their conditions of detention when they are deemed unworthy.

Deemed insufficient on the left, this text aims to meet the requirement of the Constitutional Council to open a remedy to detainees.

The bill proposed by the chairman of the Law Commission François-Noël Buffet (LR), on which the government has initiated the accelerated procedure, could be definitively adopted "by the end of March", its author says.

Its first reading examination is already scheduled for March 19 at the National Assembly.

"A major step forward for the improvement of detention conditions"

The General Controller of places of deprivation of liberty Dominique Simonnot welcomed, in a letter to senators, "a major step forward for the improvement of conditions of detention" but ruled that the text "cannot be considered sufficient to preserve the rights of detained persons ”.

On October 2, 2020, the Constitutional Council censored an article of the Code of Criminal Procedure which hampered the appeals of people placed in pre-trial detention in degrading conditions.

He demanded that a new law be passed before March 1, 2021. This decision followed a judgment of January 30, 2020 of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) condemning France and a judgment of the chamber criminal court of the Court of Cassation.

A government text slow to materialize, François-Noël Buffet took the initiative of a bill.

"Create a clearly established appeal procedure"

"The purpose of the text is to create a clearly established appeal procedure," he said.

It provides under what conditions and according to what modalities a detainee can appeal to the judicial judge when he considers that he is undergoing conditions unworthy of detention, so that they can be brought to an end.

The person in pre-trial detention will be able to seize the judge of freedoms and detention (JLD), the convicted person who executes his sentence the judge of the application of sentences (JAP).

"No absolute right to release"

It is only if the problem is not resolved by the Prison Administration within the time limit that the judge can order the transfer of the detained person or his release if he is placed in pre-trial detention or, under conditions, a adjustment of sentence if it is definitively condemned.

The LR rapporteur of the text Christophe-André Frassa underlines that "the bill does not establish an absolute right to release".

This involves reconciling the right to decent conditions of detention with "the right to security and the objective of preventing breaches of public order".

The bill incorporates the operative part of an amendment that the government tabled in the Assembly during the examination of the bill on the European Public Prosecutor's Office and specialized criminal justice.

It was then deemed “inadmissible” because it had no connection with the text.

"Excessive length" of the proposed procedure

For the socialist Jean-Pierre Sueur, who has tabled a competing bill, the text by François-Noël Buffet presents “shortcomings and inadequacies”.

The senator relies on the letter from Dominique Simonnot who particularly deplores the "excessive length" of the proposed procedure or the too great complexity of the request that the detainee must address.

Among his amendments in committee, only one was retained, which enshrines the right for the detainee to be heard before the judge makes his decision.

For the International Observatory of Prisons (OIP) association, the creation of a remedy "will not put an end to the unworthy conditions of detention".

"The decision of the European Court posed as main requirement the immediate absorption, by France, of its prison overcrowding", recalls the OIP in a press release.

Without a "policy of prison decline", France will continue "to undermine the principle of human dignity", she believes.

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