Paris (AFP)

One does not want to go out after nearly half a century in prison. Another multiplies incidents and years in isolation. Many have returned after their release. Specialists in long sentences point to the complex management of these "hopeless" detainees and their thorny reintegration.

"To survive, their future is not 20 or 30 years, but ten or fifteen days," says Damien Pellen, director of the detention center Argentan (Orne), through the central houses of St. Martin -de-Ré (Charente-Maritime) and Condé-sur-Sarthe (Orne).

Five, ten or twenty years? There is no definition of long sentence, but for Mr. Pellen beyond "ten, twelve years, we feel a break with the outside.There is such a technological evolution, societal that they are completely disconnected when they go out ".

Studies have shown that the psycho-social effects of incarceration and the loss of autonomy and benchmarks are felt from five years, says Marie Crétenot, a lawyer at the International Prison Observatory (OIP).

The profiles of long sentences - sentenced to the most serious crimes - are as diverse as the institutions hosting them. But the evils of a long detention are often the same: distension of the family bond, over-adaptation to the prison environment and anxiety as the exit approaches.

The oldest prisoner of the central house of Poissy (Yvelines), arrived in 1972, does not want to leave. He came back from an escorted leave saying, "Never let me out," says Assistant Director Isabelle Lorentz. "He has been incarcerated for so long that the institution has become his benchmark."

There are "those who let themselves be caught and those who will be in the refusal and the opposition", distinguishes Marie Crétenot.

The most "unmanageable" will make ten, twenty, fifty establishments. Rachide Boubala, sentenced in 1996 to three years for a failed robbery, released in 2038, is an "extreme case".

His "resistance to the penitentiary system" - outrage, threats, throwing excrement, assault, hostage or three cell fires that will cost him "five years each" according to Ms. Cretenot - earned him to amass convictions " internal ".

- "Missed" outings -

Many long sentences present psychiatric disorders, often reinforced by the weight and years of detention. "These are the ones that pose the most difficulties, with the violent, because our staff are poorly trained," says Cécile Izard, director of detention at the Arles power station (Bouches-du-Rhône).

Wear, intolerance to frustration, the lack of prospects ... "It's the vicious circle: the more they degrade, the less they come out and we make people who will squat our isolated neighborhoods for years ", remarks Vincent Vernet, director of the ultra-safe prison center of Vendin-le-Vieil (Pas-de-Calais). One of his ex-residents spent eight or nine years in solitary confinement.

Justice of the application of the sentences in the spring of another very secure prison, Condé-sur-Sarthe, Hugo Rialland notes a "paradox: sometimes it is the people posing problem in detention which have chances of adapting in the middle They have a potential to fight, and to find freedom is also to fight in certain forms. "

"The over-habit of prison" means that many "miss the exit", continues the judge, who counted "up to seven out of ten returns" Conde.

"Sometimes the length of the sentence is so important that the return to the prison cell is inevitable," says a headteacher, for whom there is lack in France a reflection on the length of sentences. "To condemn someone at 30, what does it mean?", He asks.

In 2006, ten "perpetrators" of the Clairvaux power station (Aube) had launched a resounding call to restore the death penalty, preferable according to them to too long sentences making them "bursting slowly".

A decade later, prisoners with long sentences remain "the forgotten ones of the penal policies", laments Marie Crétenot.

According to Prison Service figures, as of 1 July 2018, nearly 500 detainees were serving life sentences, 1,000 were sentenced to more than 20 years and some 5,200 to more than 10 years. More than 71,000 people are currently incarcerated in France.

© 2019 AFP