The management of overcrowding in remand prisons currently constitutes the principle criterion for assignment to long-term detention centres. This phenomenon is not without impact upon the atmosphere prevailing in detention facilities and upon the administration’s bias in favour of a regime aimed at guaranteeing order and discipline. The prisons administration’s will to give priority to the management of overcrowding in remand prisons has thus led it to partially abandon any real policy of orientation based upon the sentence enforcement programmes of convicted prisoners. Within long-term detention centres, this has resulted in prisoners with very different penal situations living together, and a highly heterogeneous prison population, which is principally composed of two types of profile: in the first place, the traditional inmates of institutions for convicted prisoners, composed of persons serving long sentences, who “move in” to live for long periods in prison and adopt a relatively stable kind of behaviour; in the second place, an inmate population composed of younger persons, sentenced to shorter sentences, or with little time left to serve, destined to stay for shorter lengths of time, who contribute to the atmosphere of the institution resembling that of a remand prison, with its share of tension, trafficking, threats and racketeering. This situation calls into question the traditional balance that used to characterise most long-term detention centres and causes disorientation for staff and prisoners belonging to the first category. In response to this problem, the old prison regime - which encouraged communal living -, is often revoked and replaced with another, with more disciplinary objectives. Apart from the management problem, this lack of any policy of orientation often renders the elaboration of any real prison sentence enforcement project illusory, a situation which can only be detrimental to preparation for release. This change is illustrated by the following remarks, made by a person encountered at the time of a control conducted in a long-term detention centre: “When the centre was devoted to long sentences, it was fair to say that the idea of rehabilitation existed; but since the institution has been regionalised and caters for persons serving short sentences, all of them sent from wings in difficulty, the atmosphere has radically changed. The young people run extortion rackets against the older inmates, readily damage the premises and sometimes exert intolerable pressure on “the nonces” 62, to such an extent that the latter end up abandoning activities out of fear of reprisals and physical threats.” In accordance with the example set by one long-term detention centre in the South-West of France visited in 2014, the rules for internal assignment of the prison population should not be fixed according to distinctions such as the nature of the prisoner’s offence or age, but on the basis of an assessment of each person’s capacity to become autonomous. Furthermore, the CGLPL recalls that, in an opinion of 22nd May 2012, it examined the major impact of prison overcrowding with regard to the course of sentences and compliance with the mission entrusted to the prisons administration. It therefore repeats its recommendations on this issue. However, the possibility of putting in place a prison regime of this kind, based upon autonomy, would involve a twofold obligation on the part of the prisons administration: - 62 on the one hand, that of making autonomy an active principle rather than being, as is currently the case, a situation only accessible to certain prisoners, but too far out of reach for others, who have no other choice than to “cope” all by themselves; “Les pointeurs”: slang term for sex offenders. 89