A few steps from the old prison of Fresnes (Val-de-Marne), the penitentiary hospital is a large, H-shaped building of worn white plaster. You pass through checkpoints and metal grilles before taking the elevator to the 3rd floor.
There, no more guards or caregivers, but a slight musty smell and a great silence: the wing dedicated to the only socio-medical-judicial security center in France still housed a detainee a few months ago, but he was released in January.
Since 2008, preventive detention has made it possible to hold a person sentenced to at least fifteen years in prison and who has already served their sentence, but who is still considered particularly dangerous and at high risk of reoffending.
Designed for sex offenders, it was decided in 2007 by the former President of the Republic Nicolas Sarkozy, after the rape of a five-year-old child by Francis Evrard, a repeat rapist who had just been released from prison.
Security detention only targets certain common law crimes (murder, rape of minors or aggravated rape), even if voices regularly demand that it be extended to terrorist profiles.
The president of the RN Jordan Bardella even wanted it “systematic” for them, why not “for life”, he said last December after the jihadist attack on the Parisian Bir-Hakeim bridge by a man released from prison in March 2020.
For the moment, this measure is better known to politicians than to magistrates: in fifteen years, it has only been pronounced 16 times, according to a source close to the matter.
The profiles of those she targets are identical: men, rather old, all convicted of sexual crimes.
Observers were concerned about the lack of a time limit for this measure (one year renewable). But no one, so far, has spent more than a few months there.
Two of them returned to Fresnes twice, another three times, the source said.
“The principle is +I am outside with obligations (for care, not going to prohibited places, being confined to my home, etc.), if I do not respect them, I return to the structure. I stay as long as it is considered that I am not able to go out+”, according to the source close to the case.
On either side of the entrance hall of the center visited by AFP are two corridors, painted in a shade of yellow. Six small rooms on one side, four on the other.
These rooms – “We don’t say cell, we’re not in detention”, they repeat on site – measure 18 m2 (double the size of a prison cell) and are identical: a bed, an armchair, free television, a kitchen area and another bathroom.
The bars on the windows are geometrically shaped and painted light, almost forgetting they are there. Sober but clean, with the air of a hospital room rather than a cell.
The routine, when there is an occupant: opening of the room at 7:00 a.m., closing at 7:00 p.m. During the day, free movement in the corridor, where small, empty rooms are lined up.
Among them, the library, never stocked with books due to lack of people to borrow them.
Further on, the gym (two machines).
And there, a common space in which we imagined, at the opening of this place dedicated to retaining and caring for, group activities and lessons.
The room was barely used: the center never hosted more than two people at a time.
– “Pasta drawings and packages” –
In the now unoccupied room of the last detainee, the drawings he stuck to the wall with toothpaste have been removed, as have the packets of pasta he stacked on his shelves and ordered in quantity.
Like the others, he was very alone here, we admit half-heartedly. Far from the objectives of “medical, social and psychological care, intended to enable the end of this measure” provided for by law.
“Inactivity” for “rule” and “great solitude”, already criticized by the general controller of places of deprivation of liberty (CGLPL) who visited the center in 2014 and 2015.
For the prevention of recidivism, magistrates prefer external measures, such as socio-judicial monitoring. It can be very restrictive: a bracelet that can be geolocated for years for example, explains Cécile Delazzari, vice-president of the National Association of Judges for the Enforcement of Sentences (Anjap).
Security detention also raises “many questions on the legal level,” she adds.
Already because the notion of “dangerousness” is “subjective”, and in French criminal law, individual responsibility is sanctioned for a given offense.
So once the sentence has been carried out and if people have not changed… “until when should it come under criminal justice?”, asks the magistrate.
Last January, the Senate, with a right-wing majority, largely adopted the opening of preventive detention to those convicted of terrorism (for sentences of at least fifteen years).
But there is no guarantee that the text will be taken up by the National Assembly resulting from the legislative elections of June 30 and July 7.
The Fresnes centre, although “empty” and “watertight”, would in any case not be secure enough to accommodate this type of profile, capable of violent actions even when locked up, warns the source close to the case.
“It is an adapted structure, designed for perpetrators of sexual crimes,” she insists, “people who are likely to be predators (on the outside) but whose penitentiary danger is very reduced.”
