Incidents of this kind are linked in particular to the near impossibility for prisoners of expressing themselves in an official, organised and recognised form. As they often say to the inspectors, “prisoners are always wrong, the warders are always right”. Today, in the majority of prisons in France, collective expression is strictly banned. Admittedly, the organisation of collective expression in prison is a difficult undertaking to put in place; in needs to take account of the imperatives linked to imprisonment and maintain the principle of the prisons administration’s authority. It does exists in European countries, as emphasised by Cécile Brunet-Ludet123: “For all that, such a right exists, in various different forms, in several Member countries of the Council of Europe, and has sometimes existed for several years. Are the issues any different in other countries? In France, it does not exist as a right, but is customary in a rare number of cases”. It is highly regrettable that the work completed by Mrs Brunet-Ludet was not followed by changes in prisons despite the prisons administration having requested that article 29 should be manifested in experiments putting collective expression of the prison population in place, with one institution per region having been designated for this purpose. The results of these experiments varied widely, some projects were not completed, others are still ongoing, all of them confirmed as allowing the prison population to speak did not result in prison disturbances. Older practices exist in other institutions: “menus”, “activities” and “prison shop” committees have been put in place in a number of institutions with delegated management. Practices of consultation prisoners need to be brought into general use and extended to issues such as rules and regulations; different actors should be involved in these practices such as warders, the service for rehabilitation and probation and the medical service as well as the private manager. The involvement of prisoners by means of established collective expression would lead to a change in the place of prisoners within the life of institutions; apart from being captive consumers, they can also be actors in the organisation of the latter and thus gain greater autonomy promoting better integration and future rehabilitation. This reflection also needs to take into account the highly worrying disappearance of recreational associations124, which have lost the right to manage the rental of television sets, which represented their principal source of funding. These associations sometimes offered prisoners, in the capacity of association members, to take part in the board of managers and administrative and other specific meetings. Nothing appears to be planned to fill the gap that they have left behind them. 123 124 “Le droit d’expression collective des personnes détenues”,Report to the DAP, February 2010. Cf. Annual Report of the Contrôle Général for 2012, p. 62. 97