In the first place, this location is fundamental with regard to the maintenance of family ties, a fact which the Contrôleur Général des Lieux de Privation de Liberté has already had occasion to set out in his Annual Report for 2010221. The report on the state of prisons produced by the Parliamentary commission of inquiry of the French national assembly in the year 2000 summed up the situation as follows: “How can families be persuaded to continue their visits when a visit of an hour and a half demands that they make themselves available for an entire day and calls for financial resources enabling them to pay a taxi for a distance of a hundred kilometres? [...] Prisons in the countryside confirm the exclusion within the exclusion”. Certain prisons, though of recent construction, are not catered for by the public transport network, access to them only in fact being possible by car. The location of several remand prisons in Île-de-France poses considerable difficulties to families. Apart from the lack of means of transport between different suburban areas, the timetables of the buses connecting these institutions to stations of the Paris area rapid-transit rail network (RER) are not coordinated with visiting timetables and are very restrictive for the families222. The location of penal institutions is a field in which the interests of prisoners and those of their friends and families tend to coincide with those of staff. Institutions which are isolated (geographically and with regard to public transport) or located in towns considered to be “sensitive” often have high levels of staff turnover. The site’s immediate environment can also have an effect upon the quality of working conditions and therefore upon staff motivation. Special attention therefore needs to be given to this issue at the time of decisions on site locations in order to avoid establishing them, as in the case of the long-term detention centre of Tarascon (Bouches-du-Rhône), in a flood-risk zone, in close proximity to an abattoir, a waste disposal site, a sewage works, a cellulose factory and a sludge-processing company. In other cases, the remoteness and isolation of facilities may lead to the abandonment of activities, despite the fact that the latter are nevertheless necessary for rehabilitation, and can render visits difficult on the part of voluntary actors who can no longer find sufficient resources to cover their travel costs to the premises. Occasional or regular visits by actors from civil society can also be hindered by remoteness or poor transport services to the institution, for example with regard to the organisation of a careers fair or the provision of support by a social sector professional. Similarly, it would be desirable for these penal institutions to be located in geographical areas enabling the involvement of contract-holders and industrial or commercial partners. The close proximity of a large town and of a major road or rail network is an asset in terms of ensuring a wide range of qualified appointments to positions within institutions. Provision should also be made for parking areas corresponding to the accommodation capacity of the institution in order to ensure that parking problems do not dissuade visitors and actors from coming to the institution using personal vehicles. Finally, it is all the more important that the latter recommendations concerning accessibility and parking should be followed in CSL and CPA insofar as the persons accommodated are led to leave the institution on a daily basis and rarely have personal means of transport at their disposal. 221 Contrôleur général des lieux de privation de liberté annual report, section 4: Maintenance of family ties and persons deprived of liberty (pp.161-239). 222 Ibid, Section 4, 1.1 Institutions accessibility (pp.165-168). 141