COMPULSORY ADMISSION TO HOSPITAL (OPINION) 71, dated 26th November 2010, recital 25), combined, as it happens, with the current protection of law and order, can constitute grounds for deprivation of liberty. c) The third relates to compulsory admission of prisoners to hospital. The authorities responsible for public order fear that the conditions under which detainees are compulsorily admitted to hospital (this is now a growing phenomenon, affecting approximately 1 200 people every year), might facilitate a possible escape, insofar as, at the present time, such hospitalisation takes place in a hospital environment under ordinary law. This is why, in some départements, when the competent doctor submits a “detailed” application for such a measure, under Articles L. 3214-1 et seq. of the Public Health Code and Article D. 398 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, its enforcement is subject in some cases to investigations conducted by the police or the gendarmerie, or to the opinion of the public prosecutor’s office. The effect of this information is to delay the admission to hospital applied for, and in some cases, even to cause permission to be denied. It always results in appropriate therapy being withheld (which is the responsibility of prison staff, on the one hand, and care staff, on the other,) from people who are deemed to require a more intensive course of treatment as a matter of urgency. In the case in point, the risk is not an arbitrary one of deprivation of liberty, but a risk of healthcare that is known to be unsuited to the patient’s state of health: yet the detainee’s human rights entitle them to receive care appropriate to their state of health (European Court of Human Rights, 5th sect., 16th October 2008, Renolde v. France, n°5608/05). The effect of these three practices, such as they are currently being implemented, and especially the first two, is to bring about a global increase in the number of hospitalised patients and the length of their stay, to impede any trial discharges that the patient’s condition might allow and in particular to keep in hospital people whose condition, as assessed by doctors, does not warrant keeping them there against their will. In some cases, as noted by the Contrôleur général, these practices may lead to high levels of occupation of hospital beds and delay the admission to hospital of people who, unlike those in the former category, might genuinely need treatment. Consequently, this is a short-sighted policy that may have the opposite effects to those desired. 81