– Crowded prisons continue to alarm elected officials
Prison overcrowding is not new but continues to agitate deputies, who asked the Council of State for a report on the incarceration rate in the canton.
Published today at 7:35 p.m.
Prison overcrowding is particularly striking at the Bois-Mermet pre-trial detention prison, where the occupancy rate is 166%.
24HOURS/Philippe Maeder
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Behind Zurich and even ahead of Geneva since 2022, Vaud remains well established in the top 3 cantons which incarcerate the most for pre-trial detention before trial. This is what emerges from the annual summary released at the end of April by the Federal Statistical Office, and this did not escape the Legal Affairs Commission of the Grand Council (CTAJ).
“Alternatives to incarceration also seem to be used in a pronounced manner by the Vaud authorities,” adds the CTAJ. In particular, the OFS figures show that the execution of sentences under electronic surveillance is itself very popular in our canton.”
A report requested
This Tuesday in plenum, the deputies accepted the postulate of this commission, which asks the Council of State to produce “in the short term, a report on the existing incarceration rate in the canton of Vaud, its main characteristics, the causes that can explain it as well as the solutions that can be identified with a view to slowing down its increase and, ultimately, reducing it.” “It will be a question of integrating both exogenous causes and those relating to the criminal policy carried out by the cantonal public prosecutor,” underlined the vice-president of the CTAJ, the Green David Raedler.
The Prison Visitors Commission reported in his last publication an occupancy rate of 166% at Bois-Mermet and 138% at La Croisée prison. The trend is not going to decrease, with an increase of 8.3% in requests for detention during the year 2023, underlined Attorney General Eric Kaltenrieder, at a press conference on May 6. The opening of a new prison with 410 places in Grands-Marais, in the Orbe plain, is planned for 2030.
Two decades
“In the seventeen years that I have had the honor of serving on the Grand Council, we have still not found the egg of Columbus to resolve this problem, despite the Criminal Chain Conference in 2013 and 2018,” said noted PLR deputy Marc-Olivier Buffat, who invited “moderation” to his colleagues “who invoke urgency”. “It’s not because we can’t find a solution that we should give up,” retorted David Raedler.
The radical left took advantage of this debate to ask again that the expert report commissioned by the Council of State from specialist Benjamin Brägger be made public, in accordance with the commitment made by Minister Vassilis Venizelos in our columns. “It will be when the time comes but it is still being developed,” said the president of the government, Christelle Luisier.
This external mandate is supposed to already outline avenues for reducing prison congestion, with “an approach favoring intercantonal comparisons” indicated the Council of State.
“Vaud policy”
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