NUMBER OF PRISONERS (OPINION) seven thousand prison places. Furthermore, on the one hand, the ratio of overcrowding (117%) drawn from comparison of the number of places and occupants is nothing more than a meaningless average, since a de facto numerus clausus operates in prisons for convicted prisoners, leading to levels of occupation which never exceed 100%. Conversely, however, occupation levels can, by way of consequence, be much higher in remand prisons. In one of the latter institutions, in the East of France, inspected by the Contrôle général last year, 163  prisoners were living in a facility providing seventy-seven places (i.e. a rate of overcrowding of 212%); the same year, another institution inspected, in the Centre West region of France, numbered seventy-eight inmates for thirty-five places (i.e. a rate of overcrowding of 223%). Moreover, the concept of a prison “place” is remarkably flexible. Thus, one West Indian remand prison inspected in theory contained one hundred and thirty places, but 244 beds66 (that is to say an excess capacity of 188%); another in the centre of Metropolitan France theoretically possessed twenty-two places, but actually had 154 “in practice” (i.e. an excess capacity level of 126%); in order to increase the “theoretical” number it suffices, for example, to simply place two bunks in an individual cell or three in a double cell, without moreover the rest of the furniture generally being increased to the same extent, due to lack of space. This situation prevails in spite of the assertion of the principle of placement in individual cells, which is subject to a moratorium until 2014 in remand prisons.67 4/ Three causes of increase in the number of persons imprisoned should be identified. In the first place, offences which lead to the pronouncement of prison sentences vary over time, according to changing definitions of offences and contemporary sensibilities. By way of example, without any intention of here making value judgements about these changes, in contrast to the past, simple larceny henceforth hardly ever leads The particularly worrying situation in French overseas territories (cf. Opinion of the French Contrôleur général des lieux de privation de liberté of 30 th June 2010 concerning the remand prison of Mayotte – Journal Officiel of 25th July 2010 – and recommendation concerning the prison of Nouméa – Journal Officiel of 6th December 2011; also cf. the report of the French Contrôleur général des lieux de privation de liberté for 2011, loc. cit. p.71) merits special examination which will not be undertaken within the framework of this opinion. 67 Article 100 of the Penitentiary law of 24th November 2009. 66 121