The National Assembly voted in the night from Tuesday to Wednesday for a regime facilitated searches of detainees, including providing for the return of unannounced searches of cells, as part of the justice reform project.

The question of the extension of the excavations was part of the demands of the prison guards who conducted last January a national protest movement after assaults by supervisors.

"Further secure prisons". "It is proposed to fight effectively against the introduction of dangerous or illegal objects in detention and to further secure prisons," explained in the Chamber "walker" Dimitri Houbron, the bearer of the adopted amendment.

The new regime will provide for the possibility for supervisors to carry out systematic full searches of detainees upon their return to prison, after being released from custody, returning from judicial extraction or leave to leave, during which time they have not been released. under constant surveillance.

Comprehensive systematic searches for inmates with a dangerous profile. Consecrating a jurisprudence of the Council of State, the text also allows systematic full searches for prisoners with a dangerous profile (radicalization, banditry) for a period of 3 months renewable. The text finally devotes the return of the preventive and untimely digs of cells, for the safety of the establishment or to avoid the traffics in detention.

The 2009 prison law limited this possibility even though the text, amended in 2016, "paved the way for sectoral searches" (in some parts of prisons), according to Dimitri Houbron.

However, the MP recalls in his amendment that "searches by palpation are less detrimental to the dignity and intimacy of the human person and must be practiced more flexibly by prison staff".

The opposition divided. MP Julien Aubert (LR) welcomed with this vote a breakthrough "that will improve the effectiveness of our device". According to him, "listen to the professionals who explain to us that they feel disarmed". The insider Ugo Bernalicis denounced to him "the systematic character" of the excavations whereas "the balance found by the socialist majority of the time was right. " According to him, "it is questioned by going a little further.This will only serve to degrade a little more the living conditions of the detainees".

The whole text of the reform of justice was voted in the night at first reading by the Assembly.