1.3 The legal search policy has been overly extended and its application is not sufficiently regulated. 2016 also saw changes introduced to the legal policy bearing on full-body searches. Since the Prison Act of 24 November 2009, "Searches must be justified by a suspicion of an offence or by the risks that the behaviour of the prisoners may cause to the safety of people and to maintaining order in the institution. Their nature and frequency are strictly adapted to these necessities and the personality of the prisoners ." The CGLPL has, on multiple occasions, stressed how very difficult it has been to apply this measure in practice. It has often denounced the fact that full-body searches continue to be conducted systematically, that the grounds put forward for search decisions are insufficient, that the conditions in which they are carried out can be degrading or amount to harassment and that there is insufficient supervision on the part of the Management over practices observed in institutions. That said, between 2009 and 2016 it has noted that the regulations have been steadily adopted and understood more clearly. This is not the case across the board however, since abusive practices are still being reported in several of the institutions visited in 2016. In one of them, although the Management acknowledged that there were abusive cell search practices going on, it did not seem to have initiated any disciplinary proceedings against the staff in the wrong – who were nevertheless identified and few in number. In another institution, two members of staff, also identified, still continue to practise body searches in an archaic, humiliating and degrading way and cell searches in a thoroughly brutal, destructive manner. Lastly, in a third institution, the motivation for full-body searches was so widespread and the population concerned so large that, in practice, these types of search had become the rule and application of the regulations the exception. Mindful of security concerns and the high number of mobile phones found in places of detention in particular, the Government wanted to extend the legal policy provided for by the 2009 Act. It primarily argued that, as soon as the search of prisoners depends upon individual behaviour, the most disciplined people – and even the most fragile – will never be searched, which makes them vulnerable due to pressure from the most domineering prisoners. This explains why the Government wanted, through an amendment under debate 4, to extend the grounds for searches beyond merely the behaviour of individuals to the collective risks posed to institutions. A search policy "when there is question of collective risk" would therefore seem to have been adopted on top of the search "for reasons related to the individual". Concerned about this new direction, the Chief inspector of places of deprivation of liberty (Contrôleure générale des lieux de privation de liberté) wished to warn Parliament by requesting each of the members of the joint committee meeting to examine the bill that became Article 111 of the Act of 3 June 2016 stepping up the fight against organised crime, terrorism and their financing, and improving the effectiveness and guarantees of the criminal procedure. In particular, it reminded them that the European Court of Human Rights 5 had unanimously found France to be in breach, in terms of full-body searches repeatedly conducted on a prisoner, of Article 3 of the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms which provides that "no one shall be subjected to torture or to inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment ". It was therefore strongly critical of the fact that, on the basis of the bill presented to Parliament, it would now be possible to conduct full-body searches without it being necessary to individualise this measure in terms of the behaviour or personality of the prisoner, but purely on the grounds of the place s/he is in at the time. It indicated that, since searches were already practised extensively, the measure put forward amounted to a disproportionate extension of the search policy and, consequently, a significant retrogression regarding the fundamental rights of the people detained. Lastly, the Court pointed out that neither the overcrowding for which the public authorities are responsible, nor the 4 5 i.e. without preliminary examination by the Conseil d’Etat. Judgment El Shennawy v. France, dated 20 January 2011. 19