These are obviously in the first place those of self-expression. Mention is often quite rightly made of the difficulties arising in prison because of the presence of an unpredictable part of the inmate population suffering from various forms of mental distress. However, equal mention should be made of the difficulties experienced by a far greater number of inmates, entirely predictable in their behaviour and eager to behave well, whose requests – for items, time limits, procedures, interviews etc. – do not receive sufficient attention. In spite of the humaneness that the majority of prisoner officers are able to show, these words which fall without reply into empty space, these forgotten letters, are attributable to insufficient numbers of staff (for example prison rehabilitation and probation counsellors), to the latter being ignorant of the regulations (this is possible in registries), to the circumstance that the responsibility falls to others (case of institutions jointly managed with a private partner), to the shortage of available goods or funds, to the simultaneity of tasks, or to laziness and interests that are well-understood137 etc. The necessary dialogue between prisoners and staff needs to be placed at the centre of practices once again in an operational manner. The electronic liaison register (CEL), which was introduced into prisons two or three years ago, includes a part intended for recording applications from persons in custody. In many institutions a considerable volume of requests is thus recorded. However, in the first place, this is not the case in all institutions; in the second place, the participation of staff in the required registration procedures is very uneven; in the third place, applications are sometimes selectively sorted, meaning that only some of them are recorded (in particular requests for changes of cell); in the fourth place, many “replies”, mentioned as such by the prison management department or the official concerned, do nothing more than inform the applicant that their request has been passed on to the appropriate department (the latter’s response, if any, not being recorded in any way); finally, the terminals that were supposed to be installed in prisons, in order to allow prisoners to record their applications in the CEL themselves, have seldom been installed or do not work. This means that, at the present time, the CEL still does not provide a response to the frustrations of the prison population with regard to the taking into consideration of its requests and many applications still remain untraceable. At the same time, nothing has come of the initiatives undertaken by the prison administration department in order to open up channels for forms of collective expression on the part of the prison population, which gave rise to experiments in some ten institutions, amongst which the Contrôleur général identified some unquestionable successes. The causes of this failure should be looked into and put right. Generally speaking, the bringing into line of prison regimes as noted above leads to social exclusion among prisoners, at the same time as new institutions are built. The isolation suffered by many is reinforced by the threats (violence, rackets etc.) weighing upon a certain number of them, which lead them to choose to remain in their cells in order to avoid walks, which are a source of danger138. In spite of institutions in which prison rehabilitation and probation counsellors take a special interest in prisoners that have no work, in general insufficient attention is given to these phenomena of abstention and withdrawal from collective life. And yet, in prisons of larger dimensions, specific means of investigation, which are rarely implement ed (on this point, the CEL does not play the role that was hoped), are required in order to achieve what, in small remand prisons, used to be done by means of day-to-day relations between staff and 137 It is obviously very difficult to ask a prison officer to pass on a letter to a prison director that he is able to read and which is very critical of him personally. 138 The contrôle général has even met prisoners who refused to go into the common shower rooms and the medical treatment facilities (because of the shared waiting rooms). 62