rules and regulations currently in service are little-known to the prison population overall. The Contrôleur Général recommends that the prisons Administration ensure that each prisoner has access to the rules and regulations of the prison in which they are accommodated. Although the libraries of institutions are usually the place in which rules and regulations are filed (the inspectors often had difficulty in procuring them), in some cases prisoners are able to have access thereto on request from managerial staff, which appears to be a good practice. Digitising of the rules and regulations was noted in one of the institutions inspected (prisoners had access to them in the library). For the Contrôleur Général, making rules and regulations easily accessible to prisoners in written form remains an objective to be reached, without overlooking the fact that a part of the prison population does not know how to read or does not speak French. In this case, translation is an essential requirement. More specific rules and regulations, including those for punishment wings and solitary confinement wings, are almost systematically handed over to persons placed in punishment and solitary confinement wings. This approach is in accordance with the texts and should be encouraged. In order to supplement the information contained in the rules and regulations, the applicable circulars should also be placed at prisoners’ disposal in a compendium of prison regulations made available in the library of each institution. 3.2 Progress in the Reception of New Arrivals The certification of the new arrivals reception procedure implemented within the framework of the application of European prison rules contributed to a considerable improvement in the provision of information to new arrivals in prisons116. Close attention has been devoted on the part of institutions to the information booklets and the new arrivals. They are often drafted in several languages and correspond to the cultural diversity of persons deprived of liberty. They are handed over in person and their distribution is accompanied with a spoken explanation of their form and content. Provision of information to new arrivals sometimes also supported by video aids. As a time when video channels are increasing in number institutions, it would be appropriate to take advantage of this means of dissemination to shed greater light on the daily life of prisoners. 3.3 The Information that gets into Institutions In the course of their visits, the inspectors noted that the presence of daily or weekly newspapers in libraries is increasingly rare. The cost of subscriptions is one explanation, as is loss of interest on the part of their readers. In order to partly make up for this development, local and regional daily papers are sometimes placed at the disposal the prison population, on the initiative of the press, in quantity and free of charge. The habit of making use of them is not absent in the passageways and, apart from the access to information that this provides to readers, it is also a manner of connecting prisons to local and regional life and therefore of contributing to prisoners remaining citizens. 116 At the end of the year 2012, 150 situations had been certified under the new arrivals reception procedure. 93