friends. For women, this situation is made worse by the fact that there are no sentencing institutions in the South of France. According to information that has reached the Chief Inspector, out of eighty-one Basque prisoners imprisoned in France at the end of 2016, only a dozen or so are detained in the Mont-deMarsan prison and Lannemezan long-stay prison, which are relatively close to their home region. The rest have been dispatched to twenty-odd other institutions across France. In all, 86% of Basque prisoners are detained more than 400 kilometres from Hendaye. The Chief Inspector has contacted the Prison Administration Department about this situation and, should transferring all of these prisoners closer to the Basque country not be possible, asked for details about any measures that could be taken to alleviate the disadvantages associated with this distance and to compensate the burden in terms of money and time on families who are obliged to make the necessary journeys for exercising their visiting rights with their imprisoned loved ones: increasing the length of time allowed in visiting rooms, easier access to family visiting rooms and Family living units (UVFs), possible financial assistance, etc. In reply, the Prison Administration Director maintained that the assignment of Basque prisoners is, pursuant to Article D.74 of the Criminal Procedure Code, a decision made on a case by-case basis in light of several criteria, including not only the right to maintain family ties but also the institution's adaptation to the criminal and prison profile and the risk level of the prisoner, and his or her behaviour in detention. He also indicated that the institution referral policy needed to be taken hand-in-hand with thinking in terms of a detention balance to be respected, avoiding assigning too many prisoners with a more particularly identified risk profile within the same institution. He pointed out that, particularly as regards Basque prisoners, the administration makes sure that there are at least two in the institutions to which they are assigned, so as to limit their sense of isolation and enable families to car share when visiting. He added that the administration also ensures that both members of a couple are assigned to the same institution. The Director went on to explain that the assignment of untried prisoners had to be decided on in agreement with the examining judge. Regarding women, he said that the issue of the territorial network of inst itutions is not specific to Basque women – and that a sentencing institution was due to open in the first half of 2017 in Marseille. On the subject of measures intended to alleviate the geographical distance, he pointed out that prisoners have access to telephones installed in the prison and can, just like any other prisoner, benefit from visits in family visiting rooms or UVFs when the institution has them. He maintained that, out of a concern for equity between all prisoners, it was not feasible to alter the length of time allowed in visiting rooms solely for Basque people. He ended with the indication that prisoners from the Spanish part of the Basque country can, since the Act of 5 August 2013, request for their sentence to be served in Spain. In light of this reply, the Chief Inspector can only observe that no special measure has been taken or, indeed, considered, by the prison administration to offset the assignment policy entailing the systematic referral of Basque prisoners all over France. Under such conditions, the Chief Inspector considers that such a policy, justified in particularly vague terms, violates these prisoners' right to maintain family ties. 3.4 The procedure for distributing meals The Chief Inspector has received referrals from several prisoners in a detention centre concerning the major impact on their daily life of a reorganisation in the way meals are distributed. Previously distributed in trays, meals are now served by the ladle. In their letters, the prisoners have mentioned 81