inspected, whatever the reality, the box in the form indicating that the person appearing before the committee “understands French” was systematically ticked. Depending on the institutions concerned, the inspectors noted that lawyers appointed by disciplinary committees to take care of the defence of prisoners called to appear before them did not systematically travel to the institutions, and even more rarely in the case of counsels for the defence chosen by their clients. When the Contrôleur général took this issue up with the director of one detention centre, the latter supplied the following figures: “for the year 2011, out of 281 prisoners called to appear [before the disciplinary committee], 167 requested the assistance of a lawyer, while lawyers only came to 56 hearings”, one third therefore. At the time of inspections, the majority of lawyers encountered declared themselves to be satisfied with the conditions in which they performed their duties within prisons, with regard to the quality of their reception in particular (Cf. section 3 access to defence rights). 2.1.3 The Scale of applied Sanctions As a consequence of the application of the Prisons Act of 2009 207, sanctions have been codified under articles R.57-7-33 and R.57-7-34 of the code of criminal procedure: seven sanctions are in general use and may be pronounced whatever the nature and circumstances of the fault208; seven sanctions are specific and their pronouncement is linked to the circumstances in which the fault was committed209. On the basis of a sample made up of twelve institutions inspected in 2011 and in the first quarter of 2012, involving institutions of various different kinds (remand prison, long-term detention centre, long-stay prison, prison with sections incorporating different kinds of prison regime) and of all dimensions (capacities of between 50 and 600 places), a list of disciplinary measures pronounced by the disciplinary committees was compiled. The results of this study show that placement in punishment cells remains the most commonly pronounced sanction: 207 - the proportion taken by placements in punishment cells among sanctions pronounced as a whole ranges from 34% in the institution that made least use of this measure and 75% in the institution where, on the contrary, it is pronounced the most. In four other institutions, placements in punishment cells represent more than half of sanctions pronounced as a whole; - suspended placements in punishment cells represent 6% of the sanctions pronounced in one institution and 53% in another. Between these extremes, the percentage of suspended punishment wing sentences varies between 16% and 32%, the latter in the same institution in which fixed placement orders are pronounced the least; - the number of warnings is between 4% and 9%; - the proportion of acquittals is in general between 5% and 18%, except in two institutions where it is only 1% and a third in which it was as high as 23% of the decisions taken by the disciplinary committee. The latter is also the institution with the lowest level of placements in the punishment wing; rd Cf. implementing decree no. 2010-1634 of 23 December 2010. These are warnings, withdrawal of the right to receive allowances, forfeiture of the right to make purchases in the prison shop subject to certain reserves, forfeiture of an appliance, forfeiture of an activity, confinement in an ordinary individual cell and placement in a punishment cell, of which the duration was considerably limited by this reform. 209 These are the suspension of employment or training, dismissal from employment or training, withdrawal of access to visiting rooms without a partition divider and the performance of cleaning work. 208 115