department and General Directorate for Labour, for the purposes of signing a joint protocol in 2018. He said that an assessment of the ESAT trial would be carried out in view of renewing its authorisation and its potential roll-out to other institutions, as part of a partnership with the Ministry of Social Affairs and Health. In response to the Chief Inspector’s recommendation to set up a national operator for labour, the Minister explained that the prison authorities had launched a study to revise the strategic guidelines on work in prisons, develop the issue and revise the current organisation and governance in an effort to swiftly come up with practical proposals for developing and promoting work in prisons. Setting up an operator appeared to be an idea worth pursuing in his view to develop the work role, insofar as it would enable overall alignment of this role, optimised regulation and enhanced performance through the definition of a strategy to develop and organise the role and set up an efficient structure. Its scope would include: production work (concessions, takeover of false concessions, wholly owned and operated workshops), general service, vocational training and activities aimed at inclusion through work in detention. The operator would have a fourfold remit: delegated project contracting across the whole scope, project contracting over the wholly owned and operated workshops, contribution to guidance and selection of prisoners, and lastly support duties. With regard to the other forms of work, the Minister pointed out that a study was in progress on assessing the conditions in which prisoners could gain or exercise their status as a self-employed micro-entrepreneur. Finally, in the Minister’s response the CGLPL noted with interest the plan in 2018 to set up an online portal accessible in prisons to enable prisoners to find out all of the training programmes available nationwide. Although the Chief Inspector commends the many planned initiatives and steps forward set out in this response, she notes that, at the end of 2017 (so nearly a year later), these pledges have not been acted upon to her knowledge. She would therefore like to be kept apprised of the action taken in light of this opinion. 2. Thematic report: Staff in places of deprivation of liberty Ever since it was set up, the CGLPL has repeatedly maintained that respect for fundamental rights in prisons, custody facilities, detention centres or in the context of involuntary hospitalisation depends directly upon the staff and their working conditions. It brings up this issue in all of its institutional inspection reports systematically, and has set out general recommendations on multiple occasions for the attention of staff. The idea that the rights of people deprived of their liberty are in competition with those of the staff tasked with their welfare is deeply flawed: on the contrary, in reality there is a genuine community of interests between them - despite an apparent conflict at times. The CGLPL finds that respecting and meeting the rights of detained persons is instrumental in ensuring a smooth provision process and, therefore, ultimately, the security of institutions. All places of detention rely upon a common organisation that combines architecture, time management and a set of rules covering a scope that ranges from the simple need to organise community living (hygiene, sharing the same space) to the willingness to apply a disciplinary regime. Within this space, professionals are sometimes subject to the same constraints as the people being detained, but, under other circumstances, are allowed some flexibility in the way they interpret rules, which gives each of them, depending on their personality, availability or energy levels, a decisive role in how effective such or such a fundamental right really is in practice. 37