Without wishing to go into the details of a question which has already been expanded upon in depth in a previous report 95, it should be mentioned that no improvement whatsoever has been observed in this area. On the one hand, in police departments in particular, there is a trend towards proliferation of the number of registers, due to the fact that (for reasons of time) each department has their own, which does not prevent the frequent occurrence of sections being completed after the event, as well as the taking of signatures from persons in police custody at the outset, in particular at the bottom of the second page of the register where the stages of the measure are recorded until discharge. On the other hand uncertainties remain with regard to procedures, in at least two areas: that of persons who are firstly put in a cell for sobering-up and, having recovered their sobriety, are then placed in police custody (in gendarmerie registers they may be recorded in two different parts); as well as persons who are placed in police custody facilities for the purpose of investigations, who are transferred to spend the night in other, more centralised, premises 96. Finally there are often serious oversights and omissions. Failure to record the date and time at which police custody comes to an end, for example, obstructs checks with regard to the duration thereof. Although, among professionals, it is often (wrongly) pointed out that the information contained in reports makes it possible to make up for gaps in the registers, the Contrôleur général has had occasion to observe in a least one scenario of this kind, in a police station in the South of France, that such was not the case, notwithstanding subsequent ministerial denials on the subject. 2.4 Prisons 2.4.1 Background details 2.4.1.1. Public Policies The volume and composition of the prison population are determined, amongst other factors, by crime policy and prison policy. Furthermore, both of these areas of policy underwent changes in 2012. As far as crime policy is concerned, the Minister of Justice issued a circular of 19 th September 2012 97 with the intention, on the one hand, of defining new relations between the Central Administration of the Ministry of Justice and the State Prosecutor’s Office and, on the other hand, while to a certain extent immediately applying the principles behind these relations, of giving directions to Principal State Prosecutors and prosecutors for dealing with offences and the persons who commit them. In this regard, the circular admittedly confines itself to existing law; it could hardly have done otherwise. Moreover, as a subsidiary question, it mentions future legislative changes. In the meantime, the circular is based upon provisions prioritising alternatives to imprisonment such as reduced sentencing98. 95 Report for 2008, op. cit., section 3, p.45 et seq. The police proceed in this manner in all large cities possessing secondary police stations. 97 th Journal officiel of 18 October 2012. This circular has already been mentioned above (page 12) with regard to the assessment concerning partial release. 98 It has already been shown (report for 2010) that changes to legislation on reduced sentencing were made in a somewhat erratic manner over a ten-year period, alternating between very liberal laws (the “Perben II” Act of 2004 and the Prison Act of 2009) and much more restrictive laws (2005,2007). 96 47