Section 1 The Contrôle Général’s Political Analyses for 2013 The Act of 30th October 2007 establishing the Contrôle Général des Lieux de Privation de Liberté (General Inspectorate of Places of Deprivation of Liberty) provides that, on the strength of the information collected from the cases submitted to him and the inspections conducted, the Contrôleur Général makes recommendations to the responsible Ministers. All inspection reports submitted to the authorities are accompanied with recommendations of this kind without exception. Because of their importance, a certain number of the latter are published in the Journal Officiel. All of them are the fruit of analyses conducted with regard to existing conditions, drawn up according to the yardstick of the fundamental rights of persons, it being incumbent upon the institution to ensure respect for the latter. These analyses are recalled below. In the first place the content of the opinions and recommendations made public shall be recalled, before returning to that of the inspection reports sent to ministers in 2013. 1. Opinions and Recommendations made Public Between the second half of 2008 and 31st December 2013, thirty-two opinions and recommendations were published in the Journal Officiel that is to say an average of almost six per year in the course of the period. These texts necessarily have the character of policy documents, since the other recommendations appear in the inspection reports. In other terms, these thirty-two documents are far from setting out the whole of the Contrôle Général’s analyses, but set out the aspects judged to be most important as far as prisoners’ fundamental rights are concerned. In 2013, four opinions and recommendations were made public by means of the Journal Officiel, more than in 2012 (three) but less than in 2011 (eight). It should be understood that this rate of publication is in no way systematic in nature, but rather dependent upon the information collected and the inspections conducted. 1.1 Urgent Recommendation concerning Young Offenders’ Institutions Article 9 (second paragraph) of the Act on the Contrôle Général provides for an emergency procedure, when inspections (or cases referred) reveal “serious infringement of fundamental rights”. In such scenarios, as an exception to the normal process of publication, the Contrôleur Général: - immediately informs the ministers concerned of his observations; - gives them a period within which to respond, which in such cases can only be short; 13