prison; although every person is free to use them for a part of the day outside the centre, they are not allowed to use them in the evening, when it is more convenient to contact family members after they have finished their day of work, and moreover, there isn’t even a telephone booth installed inside the building that permits this. Moreover, this open prison does not adjoin any other penal institution that may possibly raise concerns of mobile phones being provided to detainees”. In reply, the Minister of Justice indicated that “from 1 January 2015, persons detained in open prisons have been allowed to keep their mobile phones on returning to the prison”. She even specified that she planned “to allow detainees held under the day-parole regime to keep their mobile phones, under the express condition, in the case of a wing integrated in a penal institution, that there is a strict separation between the living area dedicated to day-parole and the rest of the institution.” However, there seems to have been no results from this intention, since the project was abandoned for no apparent reason in February 2015. The context of the fight against terrorism cannot explain such a renunciation, since there is no apparent link between this policy and the situation of people in the process of reintegration, placed under a day-parole regime, who are free to contact anyone throughout the day. The CGLPL can only regret that the intentions of the Government did not lead to any results. 2. The consequences of the Opinion dated 15 February 2011 pertaining to certain terms of hospitalisation by court order and to the recommendations related to mental health and the rights of patients formulated in the 2013 annual report This set of recommendations, the first of which were formulated before the laws dated 5 July 2011 and 27 September 2013, tend to favour a delicate balance between the rights of persons deprived of liberty, the requirements of public order, the need for healthcare and the consideration of the fragile nature of the persons concerned. The need to provide healthcare cannot eclipse the deprivation of liberty, which must come with all of the necessary guarantees, especially as the person concerned is not necessarily capable of easily exercising his rights. The CGLPL recommended that the authorities in charge of granting preliminary discharges or the measures of ending hospitalisation by court order must take into account that between the start of the measure and the day of discharge, there had been a veritable healthcare process that has borne fruit. The CGLPL observed that the administrative officers were reluctant to agree to these measures, thereby resulting in an increase in the number of hospitalised patients and in the duration of their stay. With the manner in which they were carried out, these two practices became an obstacle to preliminary discharges that were justified by the patients’ condition, and moreover allowed patients to be kept in hospital, even though the doctors attested that their conditions did not justify holding them against their wills. They could, in certain cases, lead to a shortage of hospital beds and possibly block the hospitalisation of persons who, on the contrary, are truly in need of it. 53

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