France's detention policies risk undermining Europe's standing on human rights, a European human rights commission report said Thursday. Convicts serving time inside French prisons had to deal with overcrowding, a lack of privacy, dilapidated facilities and substandard hygiene, the Council of Europe's Human Rights Commissioner Thomas Hammarberg said in the report, which followed an inspection of the French detention system in May. He said the fundamental rights of prisoners had to be respected and that France needed to come up with more effective solutions to these problems and, importantly, more funding, especially for inmates with mental disorders. "Dangerousness, on the basis of which preventive detention is ordered, is not a clear legal or scientific concept," he said. "Harsh measures have to be applied in some circumstances in order to protect society, but their use should not become routine. "They must remain the last resort and other recidivism prevention measures should be applied in the first instance."
Convicts serving time inside French prisons had to deal with overcrowding, a lack of privacy, dilapidated facilities and substandard hygiene, the Council of Europe's Human Rights Commissioner Thomas Hammarberg said in the report, which followed an inspection of the French detention system in May.
He said the fundamental rights of prisoners had to be respected and that France needed to come up with more effective solutions to these problems and, importantly, more funding, especially for inmates with mental disorders.
"Dangerousness, on the basis of which preventive detention is ordered, is not a clear legal or scientific concept," he said. "Harsh measures have to be applied in some circumstances in order to protect society, but their use should not become routine.
"They must remain the last resort and other recidivism prevention measures should be applied in the first instance."
French jails truly are horrible. Un roi sans divertissement est un homme plein de misères
