Illustrative image of a French prison.

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BERTRAND GUAY / AFP

The National Assembly validated this Friday a bill from the Senate, allowing detainees to denounce their conditions of detention, when they are deemed unworthy.

A decision that opens the way to remedies for prisoners.

The Minister of Justice Eric Dupond-Moretti greeted in the hemicycle a “clear, legible and effective device” able to “meet the constitutional requirements” as well as “of humanity and dignity”, the oppositions doubting however that it is easy to apply.

The text approved at first reading being however slightly different from that of the upper house, deputies and senators will try to reach an agreement with a view to rapid adoption.

A judgment of the Court of Cassation

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, a deadline already passed.

This decision followed a judgment of January 30, 2020 of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) condemning France and a judgment of the criminal chamber of the Court of Cassation.

The bill proposed by the chairman of the Senate Law Committee François-Noël Buffet (LR) provides under which conditions and according to which modalities a detainee can seize the judicial judge when he considers he is under conditions unworthy of detention, so that be terminated.

Critics on the left

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

Right and left considered that it was "difficult to oppose" this bill, while stressing that it was not on its own going to offer a "solution" to the indignity in detention, because of prison overcrowding.

"The device rests largely on the shoulders" of the prison administration, also noted Pascal Brindeau (UDI).

She finds herself "judge and party", added Ugo Bernalicis (LFI).

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