“We need more places of detention, and in particular for short sentences,” assured Gérald Darmanin, new Minister of Justice, speaking to several media including TF1, this Wednesday in Amiens. “I am very sensitive to the idea that short sentences must be carried out,” he added. Maybe we shouldn't build prisons like always. We don't always need prisons for people who are serving 20 years in prison with watchtowers and barbed wire at high costs.
“We must be able to build things on a human scale, on national territory”, so that a sentence pronounced by magistrates “is carried out in the hours and days to come”.
Unblock construction thanks to the law?
Coming to Amiens to speak with the staff of the courthouse and the prison officers of Liancourt on this Christmas Day, the Minister of Justice spoke of the plan to build 15,000 prison places by 2027 and launched in 2017. According to his predecessor in the position, Didier Migaud, this plan, delayed, could not be realized “before 2029”. “Budgeted” according to Gérald Darmanin, this program “could not be built in time for many reasons and in particular because no one wants a prison near their home (…) Provisions are undoubtedly needed in the law which allows the construction of prison places (…) Let us unblock the constructions”.
Court sites “in the pipeline”
Gérald Darmanin also announced his intention to unblock the court sites: “There are still some to be built and which are in the pipeline,” he admitted. I am thinking of the court in the Lille metropolitan area, in Mayotte, Marseille…”. “I will undoubtedly have the opportunity to do things different from my predecessors,” he concluded regarding all these subjects. Everything will depend, in fact, on the lifespan of his government.
