Lastly, the CGLPL can weigh in on policy making. It has done this by calling for such legislative measures as the inclusion, in legislation or regulations, of an objective to reduce the use of solitary confinement and restraint in mental health institutions, of the possibility of awarding grants to detained students or of the requirement to seek out alternatives to imprisonment for pregnant women or young mothers. It has also done this by helping to evaluate certain public policies, not least those underpinning juvenile detention centres, about which a consensus was finally reached around the findings and guidelines it recommended. And yet, despite these grounds for satisfaction, situations persist that are still a source of disappointment – across the whole of the CGLPL’s remit. In custody facilities, this is the systematic nature of unnecessary, humiliating security measures such as wearing handcuffs or confiscating bras and spectacles. In juvenile detention centres, it is the reliance, still common, on insufficiently trained staff and disciplinary protocols that are poorly defined. In detention centres for illegal immigrants, it is the gaps in information, or stereotyping, as well as the near complete non-existence of activities. In psychiatric institutions, it is the persistence of numerous locked sectors – including for accommodating voluntary patients - as well as a still patchy grasp of the new rules concerning solitary confinement and restraint. In prisons, finally, it is all of the problems that result from overcrowding, the systematic or excessive use of unnecessary and humiliating security measures or the inability to apply the principle of equal access to care – even though this has been enshrined in law for almost ten years now. The question as to whether the overall sense is one of satisfaction or disappointment is a hard one to answer. But seeing progress in terms of certain subjects spurs us on to continue our efforts. The fact that, in 2017, members of the French National Assembly’s Committee of Laws simultaneously exercised their right of visit to prisons then held an extensive and immensely constructive exchange of views with us is positive – both regarding the presence of prisons on the political agenda and the importance attached to the institution’s opinions. We can only hope that the other categories of facility subject to inspections by the CGLPL benefit from similar attention. And above all that the policy makers have the courage to do what is necessary to ensure that the Rule of Law does not stop at the entrance to places where people are deprived of their liberty. Adeline Hazan 10