The right to eat meals together is granted in certain long-term detention centres, which have arranged refectories organised in such a way as to respect the balance between personal autonomy and forms of collective control: allocation according to accommodation sector, with the right to change refectory; free choice of table and the appointment of a head of table, in charge of access to utensils and cooking equipment (ovens, refrigerators, storage cupboards), which are locked away; the right to choose to eat one’s meals in the refectory, where they are delivered, or to go and collect them to be eaten later in their cell etc. These are factors that characterise a real social life, as illustrated by the following finding made in the course of a control conducted in a long-term detention centre in 2014: “It seemed clear to the inspectors that life in the refectories is subject to rules elaborated by the prisoners themselves and that they establish a kind of hierarchy between themselves. […] It constitutes a space that is shared – though not excessively – whose use corresponds to orders of precedence and the choices made by participants, who are more or less easily able to share tables, food and conversations. These choices are obviously essential for persons who have to share a communal life for very long periods. There is thus a mixture of shared and chosen private relations and relations subject to prison hierarchies.” Spending an evening in common is possible in certain centres, where the doors are closed at 11 p.m., which makes it possible to organise “entertainment evenings” around a chosen topic, watch a football match together etc. Here and there it is sometimes noted that initiatives of this kind have been abandoned, due to a lack of proposed events, in order to avoid the establishment of a type of self-organisation harmful to the most vulnerable persons. The CGLPL recommends the fitting out of more facilities of this kind and the promotion of a mode of organisation enabling the emergence of collective life within accommodation wings. Rather than the traditional delivery of items purchased in prison shops to cells by the warders, certain institutions have already put counters in place for picking up items purchased. This type of initiative should be developed and extended in the form of real places of purchase, of the minimarket type, in which everybody is able to choose and compare the products on sale, order their purchases directly, pay by means of a magnetic card-type system and receive immediate delivery. The putting in place of external spaces contributes to the emergence of social life within institutions, such as the vast exercise yards and gardens in long-stay prisons and long-term detention centres visited, containing trees and lawns and provided with tables and benches or garden seats, which can enable meals to be eaten together outdoors in the summer. In one longterm detention centre, a pond (with fish) gave the place a verdant appearance rarely seen in prisons. In allotment garden-type areas, numerous people engage in cultivating flowers as well as vegetables and it is rarely reported that this leads to vindictive acts, destruction of plants or boundary disputes. Wherever it exists, the practice of gardening appears to be a calming influence in prison, which encourages prisoners to collectively make the yard their own, as illustrated by the following extract from the report on an inspection of 2014: “The existence of these areas, the absence of damage and rubbish, the presence of trees and plants and the free movement of prisoners are in complete contradiction with the restricted and concretecovered areas of more contemporary and security-oriented architecture, 95