In this respect, the adoption of the Act of 15th August 2014 is to be welcomed, concerning the adaptation of sentences to offenders’ individual requirements and consolidation of the effectiveness of penal sanctions, various different provisions of which should reduce the number of persons entering prison: establishment of criminal sentence enforcement outside of prison (contrainte pénale), abolition of mandatory sentencing, conditional release, with a compulsory judicial meeting two thirds of the way through the sentence. The latter measure will make it possible to review convicted prisoners’ situations and increase the number of discharges: partial release, placements in an open environment, electronic tagging and conditional release 10. In order to face the situation arising from the expiry of the new five-year moratorium provided for by the Prisons Act of 24th November 2009, the Minister of Justice proposed a governmental amendment of the 2015 Finance Bill, with a view to extending the moratorium until 2018. The president of the Law Commission of the National Assembly dissuaded her from pursuing this proposal. At the time of her hearing before the Law Commission of the National Assembly on 13th November 2014, the Contrôleure générale des lieux de privation de liberté welcomed certain experiments conducted in a few institutions by means of agreements between State Prosecutor’s Offices, the judges responsible for the execution of sentences and the managers of penal institutions. For example, in one institution in the East of France, when a certain level of overcrowding is reached, the public prosecutor at the court of first instance informs the members of the national legal service in the State Prosecutor’s Office, and the judges responsible for the execution of sentences, in order to enable any reduced sentencing procedures in progress to be accelerated and, if possible, the short-term postponement of implementation of short sentences. However, in spite of the value of these practices, she noted that they were dependent upon individuals and therefore fragile. For this reason, she proposed that they be brought into general use and that provision also be made for acceleration of the discharge of convicted prisoners nearing the end of their sentences: those with the shortest amount of time remaining to be served would have the benefit of reduced sentencing rather than simple release 11. This acceleration of discharge would enable considerable reduction of prison overcrowding. Today, such regulation of the prison population is one of the only means of reducing prison overcrowding and therefore progressively securing placement in individual cells, as provided for by law. Finally, the Contrôleure générale recalled the need to pursue two objectives which are entirely compatible: the modernisation of France’s prisons and the refusal of an endless policy of expansion of the prison population. At the same time, the Prime Minister entrusted Dominique Raimbourg, Member of the French National Assembly, to draft a report on this issue. This report was made public on 30th November 2014 and comprised 24 recommendations, of which one was concerned with placement of “initial”, elderly and handicapped prisoners in individual cells, with a new moratorium until 2022, including two intermediate stages: June 2016 and June 2019, at which dates the government is to present reports to Parliament on the state of implementation of individual cell placement, with provision of financial and budgetary information concerning the 10 Only 7% of persons eligible for conditional release currently have the benefit of this system. In his report of 2013, the deputy Dominique Raimbourg pointed out that, on 1st October 2012, 2,557 convicted prisoners – that is to say 10% of the convicted prisoners held in remand prisons – had no more than one month left to serve. 11 23