- Four of the twelve institutions of which the study sample is composed do not make use of the sanction of confinement in ordinary individual cells. Only three institutions show numbers of confinements – between 39 and 47 – that demonstrate the effective existence of this punishment in the scale of sanctions. In two cases, confinement accounts for less than 10% of the sanctions pronounced, whereas it represents 30% in the final institution. In its annual report for 2010, the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture (CPT) points out that solitary confinement ordered for disciplinary reasons constitutes the harshest disciplinary measure and that for this reason, in acknowledgement of the dangers inherent to this sanction, countries specify the maximum duration for which it may be imposed. The CPT recommends that the prisons administration should be authorised to pronounce this sanction for a given maximum period, while the possibility of imposing longer periods should be reserved to courts, within the limit of a statutory maximum. 2.1.4 Placement in Punishment Wings pending Hearings and use of Means of Restraint In case of urgency, prisoners may be placed in punishment cells or in confinement in ordinary individual cells without waiting for the disciplinary committee to meet, as an exceptional measure pending inquiry and hearing, in order to maintain internal order within the institution. The cumulative conditions of implementation are determined by whether the measure which, as the circular of 9th June 2011210 recalls, should be “the sole means of bringing an incident to an end or preserving internal order at the time when the decision is taken” is proportionate to the seriousness of the fault. Such measures should only be considered when other means of bringing disturbances to an end have failed or are inadequate. Punishment cell placement decisions are subject to supervision by the judge empowered to rule on abuses of power 211. On the basis of the Prisons Act, which introduced the option of imposing conf inement pending inquiry and hearing, as an alternative to placement in punishment cells, the above mentioned circular recommends that such placements in a punishment cell should only be used as a last resort, if confinement in an ordinary individual cell is not possible. This new provision remains a total dead letter in the institutions inspected in 2012. Though not always restricted to the framework of cases of urgency nor always having an exceptional character, placement in punishment wings pending inquiry and hearing did not, for all that, appear to be in majority use within the institutions inspected. In institutions of large dimensions, placement pending inquiry and hearing is widely used, in particular following refusals on the part of prisoners to “return to” their cells, in most cases due to difficulties with the other person or persons who also live there. In institutions of more modest dimensions, the management methods used by staff – which are connected to their better knowledge of the prison population – ensure that placement pending inquiry and hearing is more exceptional. By way of illustration, during the half-year preceding the inspection of one remand prison of about one hundred places, with a population of around 250 persons, nine placements pending inquiry and hearing had occurred, that is to say an average of one every three weeks; in the course of the same period, the institution’s disciplinary committee had ordered forty-six punishment cell 210 Circular JUSK 1140024C Cf. French Council of State, no. 293786, Section française OIP [“French section of the OIP international prisons th watchdog”], 17 December 2008 211 116