The prison administration must take emergency measures to improve the condition of prisoners in Limoges (Haute-Vienne) and Saint-Martin-de-Ré (Charente-Maritime). Thus decided, Tuesday, December 17, administrative justice.
The judge was contacted by the Order of Lawyers and the French section of the International Prison Observatory (OIP), after an unannounced visit to the Limoges remand center by the President of the Bar at the beginning of November. The magistrate considered that the conditions of detention there were “contrary to human dignity”according to a press release from the city’s administrative court.
“Serious breaches”
Prison overcrowding, lack of partitioning of sanitary facilities in cells, lack of maintenance, proliferation of bedbugs, insufficient hygiene of prisoners: so many “serious breaches” already reported by the General Controller of Places of Deprivation of Liberty (CGLPL) in 2022 and which have not been corrected since, denounced the Bar Association at the hearing.
Dismissing the requests not falling within his jurisdiction, the judge ordered to issue “without delay” additional covering to inmates who request it, as long as windows remain broken and expose them to the cold.
The administration must also regularly distribute hygiene kits, as well as cell maintenance kits, to prisoners free of charge. Finally, he was ordered to isolate the toilet areas by means of a partition or a wooden panel in the cells, in order to protect the privacy of the prisoners.
In service since 1856, the Limoges remand center has a capacity of 83 places and suffers from a “old and significant prison overcrowding”notes the judge in his decision, with an occupancy rate of 195% on the day of the president’s visit.
The end of the “systematic nature” of strip searches
In Charente-Maritime, 15 detainees from the central house of Saint-Martin-de-Ré, with the OIP, took legal action to denounce a “chronic unsanitary conditions”. The summary judge of the administrative court of Poitiers ordered the prison administration, ” as soon as possible “to strengthen the effectiveness of measures to combat the presence of cockroaches in buildings and to ensure the regulation of water temperature in showers.
The administration must also “stop the systematic nature of strip searches for detainees returning from family visiting rooms”adds the court in a press release.
After a visit to the Île de Ré establishment in September 2021, the CGLPL services pointed out “a dilapidated building in the confinement areas which continue to deteriorate over time”. Opened in 1875, this central house for long sentences is the largest in France with a capacity of around 460 places, according to the OIP.
