There is this remark that Caroline Papelier sometimes hears when she leads interventions in a prison environment: “We’re not queers, why are you offering condoms?” A community health guide at the Aides de Strasbourg branch for six years, the thirty-year-old explains how, in one to two hours, the speech of the prisoners she meets evolves. “And at the end of our intervention, they are all in!”adds his colleague Aline Primus, from the Aides branch in Mulhouse. “They tell us that they will no longer share their mowers with each other and that they will come back to be tested”she adds.
Since 2018, Aides has been working in three penitentiary establishments in Alsace with the aim of applying a dimension inscribed in the association’s DNA: community health. “It’s the idea of involving people in the reflection, being able to analyze their needs thanks to them and with them. A form of health empowerment”translated by Riad Drissi, coordinator of Aides en Alsace and member of the association for ten years.
“There is an urgent need for the law to be applied”
In the Ensisheim central prison, the Lutterbach penitentiary center and the Oermingen detention center – where prisoners serve sentences of more than two years – Aides Alsace, which has seven employees and around forty members, is implementing places actions where incarcerated people are no longer just a prison number. “A name, a first name, is more rewarding”underlines Riad Drissi. Actions which also try to establish risk reduction protocols (RDR), including the principle of equivalence of care between open and closed environments was included in the 2016 health law… Eight years later, the decree of The application has still not been published, prompting 17 associations, including Aides, to react. Last January, in front of the Ministry of Justice, they demonstrated to demand the application of the prison aspect of the law.
For Florian Valet, administrator of Aides and prison referent within the association, it is “a matter of health emergency”. “Unfortunately, in prison, we know that people are six to ten times more likely to be infected with the HIV virus. Because the virus is circulating and there are many risky behaviors”he describes. And to continue: “A third of people who enter prison have an addictive problem other than tobacco. There is an urgent need for the law to be applied.” In Alsace, Aides’ actions in prison environments are subsidized by the regional coordinator for the fight against HIV infection (CoreVIH Grand Est), which, in 2017, responded to the regional agency’s call for projects of health on “reducing risks and harm in remand centers”. The project benefits from dedicated funding of 450,000 euros. In France, the Grand Est is the only region to offer such a system in the twenty-four prison establishments spread between Alsace, Lorraine and Champagne-Ardenne.
“A long-term job”
Despite this regional coordination, the application of RDR behind bars sometimes only owes its salvation to the goodwill of prison administrations and detention care units. “That we provide a “Roll your straw” kit” [quinze feuilles destinées à être roulées pour sniffer, ndlr] or a sterile syringe kit, this can be seen as an incentive, where the prison focuses more on withdrawal”sighs Caroline Papelier. “The debate crystallizes around the needle exchange program even though in detention, it ultimately affects few people”completes Riad Drissi. He notes a “long-term work” to prison staff: “Today, supervisors are more open to talking about risk reduction. And they understand more the meaning of our coming to prison, they tell us.”
The fact remains that the conditions of access to this reduction of risks in detention are not sufficient. And for activists, the obstacles are not hidden in financial difficulties: “A kit of sterile syringes only costs 83 cents each, it’s definitely a political problem”estimates Riad Drissi. Her colleague Caroline Papelier cuts it short: “Prison is supposed to be a space of deprivation of liberty, not a place of additional punishment.”
Related News :