rejects and those it accepts on the basis of their principle – even if it seems difficult to take immediate action on them. From 2017, supervision of the CGLPL's general recommendations will be rounded off with supervision of the special recommendations it expresses following the visit of each prison, mental health institution, juvenile detention centre or detention centre for illegal immigrants. Occasionally, this supervision may also bear on some custody facilities when a particularly serious situation has been reported, i.e. when the minister has received a direct referral following the visit of the institution rather than through the annual summary. Every year, this supervision will be carried out for all of the visits performed three years previously. For example, in the summer of 2017, the ministries will be asked about the action taken subsequent to the CGLPL's visits conducted between 1 August 2014 and 31 July 2015. 1.2 The recommendations concerning prisons The CGLPL's general recommendations on prisons form a sizable set going into every aspect of life in prison and the rights of prisoners. The details and supervision thereof can be found in Appendix 4. The prison administration does not seem to have set up any official system for monitoring these recommendations, which explains why the CGLPL is struggling to get a detailed picture of the measures taken to ensure their implementation. Many of these recommendations concern improving the conditions in which prisoners are taken in hand, either in human or physical terms. The CGLPL's findings are then shared by the Government and there are no objections in principle to its recommendations. The obstacles to their implementation are chiefly of a budgetary nature: the three main ones – which are elaborated on incidentally in Chapter 1 of this report – being prison overcrowding, understaffing in prisons and the dilapidated or cramped state of the facilities. To resolve them, the CGLPL cannot stress enough the need to agree on a genuine budgetary priority for prisons. Once the financial means have been unlocked, the issues regarding the right to an individual cell, personalised monitoring of rehabilitation, access to activities and prison services, hygiene and access to healthcare, for example, will, for the most part, be able to be addressed. And yet other difficulties call for measures where the budget is not the only issue. They require a shift in the way the role of prisons, the point of sentences and the place of prisoners in society are perceived. On a certain number of these points, the Government objects to the CGLPL's recommendations in principle. For example, the right to maintain family ties and preparation for rehabilitation call for better consideration of technological progress, i.e. increased access to telephones and Internet in particular, in compliance with the controls called for by institutional security and public order. On these points the CGLPL upholds its recommendations despite the objections that the Government has levelled in this regard. The same applies, in general, to points concerning the proportionality of constraints imposed on the prison population in the name of security. For example, as regards the search doctrine, the security measures taken during prisoner movements for medical reasons or checking of written documents other than correspondence. Several examples along these lines can be found in Chapter 1 of this report. Lastly, some of the CGLPL's recommendations are not objected to in principle, and can even be approved of to a certain extent, without sufficient measures being taken to put them into 52