availability on the part of staff; but they also require precise traceability of the measures implemented, which needs to be indisputable, though its practical details may vary. Finally, with regard to prisoners hospitalised on mental health grounds, the Act specifies (with a strange repetition of the same provision in article 12 and in article 13) that they may be hospitalised with their consent in a Specially-Equipped Hospitalisation Unit (UHSA), which could appear ambiguous (but in fact was hardly so) from reading the text of the Act of 2011; it also abrogates the note on Units for Difficult Psychiatric Patients, which the Act of 5th July 2011 had considered appropriate to include (that is to say article L. 3222-3 mentioned above) in the belief that UMDs are merely psychiatric departments, and although they are admittedly special, their principle is the same as that of other departments, and there is therefore no more reason for them to appear in the law than there is for the latter. The Act has not resolved everything: such was not its ambition, although it may have gone further than the Constitutional Council’s requirements. The Contrôle Général, which is concerned with patients’ fundamental rights, observes that it has specified the role of the judge, and therefore the terms of control of deprivation of liberty by the courts. It would be desirable for patients’ other rights, and fundamental rights in particular, to be more effectively introduced into the law66. 2.5.2 A number of Specific Assessments concerning Psychiatric Institutions The inspection reports for institutions show great continuity as compared with previous annual assessments. However, a number of major factors which call for changes need to be emphasised. 2.5.2.1 – Real Security Issues The right balance between patients’ rights and security has not yet been found. The downward spiral characteristic of many places of liberty unfortunately becomes established in psychiatric hospitals just as irresistibly as elsewhere. Should a regrettable incident occur – in this case, a patient running away – prefects immediately call for the reinforcement of security measures likely to prevent recurrence thereof. In general, this very heavy process is only applied in the direction of greater constraint: after months or years without running away, the measures are not reversed. These measures, - and closed units in particular, at a time when outings are becoming rare due to lack of sufficient staff in many institutions -, reinforce the feeling of being cut off from the outside world among patients, cause anxiety and weaken them. The fact remains, as has already been pointed out in a previous annual report, that there are as many cases of patients running away from closed units as there are from open units67. If all institutions catering for patients suffering from mental illness are not to be transformed into units for difficult psychiatric patients, the required proportionality between the measures taken and the reality of the dangers incurred needs to be borne firmly in mind, and this is even more the case, as already stated, with regard to the balance between patients’ rights and the requirements of security. However, even more decisively, these measures comprise an error of perspective. As psychiatrists constantly emphasise, patients suffering from mental illness are more in danger than they are dangerous. Moreover, they feel in danger. And rightly so. The Contrôle Général has already had occasion to mention violence and non-consenting sexual relations within units. However, 66 67 Cf. section 9 below, concerning the rights of patients suffering from mental illness. Annual Report for 2012, p. 78. 60