OPINIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS OF THE FRENCH CGLPL
It should be concerned with the practical difficulties of persons, when
the transition from full detention to partial release causes them.
5/ Treatment constitutes an important shortcoming of partial release
as it currently functions.
Concerning health conditions and treatment to be dispensed for
pathologies, those on partial release no longer have access to the
arrangements covering prisons. They therefore have to find the
necessary resources (often in a town where they have no knowledge
of anything). They need social-security protection: certain institutions,
but not the majority, have made agreements with the social-security
system to accelerate the necessary applications.79 They also need
local health-care services: some institutions have made agreements
with health centres (municipal, for example); but not all. Treatment
centres do not accept those on partial release because they consider
that they are not residents of the municipality.
Concerning obligations for treatment imposed by magistrates (notably
in cases of addiction), the specialised centres are often overloaded
and the waiting times are in weeks or months. Because partial release
does not exceed several months, the obligations are not wholly, or
only partly, actually followed.
6/ The access to work or training, and especially to a job when one has
to be found, is made difficult for several reasons.
The primary difficulty is that certain open prisons or wings may be far
removed from employment pools, even more so because as we know,
over the last 25 years, new prisons have been built outside towns.
Consequently, a means of transport must be found, which may be
distant and scarce. One institution had planned “two wheeler” rental
to resolve this difficulty: it had to abandon it due to lack of resources;
its residents walk several kilometres in all weathers to reach their
work, and to come back. These distances are difficult to reconcile with
the hours imposed. A prisoner who is “seeking work” states that he is
entitled to go out from 9 a.m. to 12 a.m. “I have an hour’s journey to
get home, collect my documents, telephone or travel to companies, then
I have to be back at midday”.
The choice of establishing open prisons or wings should always favour
On this point, see the 2011 annual report of the Contrôleur général des lieux de
privation de liberté, chapter 3, “Access to social rights for prisoners”.
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