In his decision handed down on 27 June, the interim relief judge ordered the prison administration to implement urgent measures to improve the conditions of incarceration of prisoners.
A procedure had been initiated by several organisations and associations such as the Prison Observatory, the Association of Lawyers for the Defence of Prisoners, the National Federation of Young Lawyers and the Association La Cimade.
Undignified conditions of detention
For Maitre Antoine Le Scolan, lawyer at the Guadeloupe bar for the French section of the prison observatory, this decision is a relief.
The applicants and their lawyers are relieved, firstly because we were afraid that the decision would not acknowledge the undignified conditions of detention at the Baie-Mahault Penitentiary Centre. Then, obviously we had asked for a lot of things in our application. Not everything was accepted, but overall, it is a decision that we consider positive because it is a decision that will impose things on the administration, which kept saying that it was doing everything for the inmates and that everything was in progress and that everything was going well.
Several measures will have to be taken in order to put an end to the “indignity of the conditions of detention”.
Undignified conditions of detention on the issue of mattresses on the floor, on the issue of electrical installations which do not meet standards, on the issue of the lack of storage in the cells, on the issue of bins which do not even have a lid in each cell, etc.
Upcoming procedures?
Whether at the Baie-Mahault penitentiary centre or the Basse-Terre remand centre, according to Me Le Scolan, other procedures could see the light of day.
For the Basse-Terre remand center, already the opacity in the prison world is a reality, the Basse-Terre remand center, it is even more difficult to obtain information because there are fewer detainees proportionally. And the lawyers who have clients in the Basse-Terre remand center have not yet initiated any procedure on this point.
Finally, if the recent court decision is followed by effect for the administration of Fond Sarail, there would be no reason to initiate new procedures.
