regime of work in prison is not the only obstacle: the fact that very few establishments offer work remains a subject of concern. In matters of correspondence, the CGLPL issued an opinion that is similar to a best practices guide3. It states that incarcerated persons must be physically capable of corresponding with their entourage (free distribution of paper, pens and envelopes). It also states that distinct letterboxes must be provided for each type of letter (internal, external, health-related), and that these must not be processed by the warders but only by the mail officer, who must be bound by professional confidentiality, and that letters addressed to the medical staff must be collected by the medical staff themselves. Despite these specific recommendations, there still are institutions where letters are submitted to warders or where dedicated letterboxes have not been installed. Finally, the offer of education remains insufficient with respect to the objectives of reintegration, which must be the focal point of the prison organisation. In some places, minors have only one hour of classes per day, in others, there are no tests for illiteracy, and in yet others, the teachers complain about systematic delays caused by the absence of staff in charge of their movements. The situation in prisons in 2015 was especially marked by debates and experiments related to controlling Islamist radicalisation in prisons. Chapter 2 of this report takes into consideration the Opinion dated 16 June 2015 concerning the treatment of detainees in healthcare institutions. This chapter mainly focuses on two pieces of data that are integral to prison life: prison overcrowding and difficulties related to the number of warders. In addition, two special points are taken into consideration: the placement of detainees in secure rooms in healthcare institutions and the application of the Prisons Act of 2009 concerning searches. 2.1 Prison overcrowding continues to increase and the means to reduce it seem to be lacking when compared to the scale of the problem Prison overcrowding in France is an old and well-known phenomenon, having national statistics as well as an objective for reducing it, which is presented every year in Parliament in the Annual Performance Programme of the Justice mission. However, this phenomenon is not homogeneous; it is more concentrated in remand prisons since prisoners are assigned to penal institutions depending on the availability of places and, in addition, even within remand prisons, it is subject to extreme disparities. First, it has been observed that there are institutions that are not experiencing overcrowding, including a few remand prisons. In other cases, there is significant overcrowding, but it is locally on a decline. In these conditions, the overall prison overcrowding, which is increasing, tends to be concentrated in certain institutions that are victims of both “basic” overcrowding as well as of its increase. Two categories of institutions are especially confronted with this difficulty: those in the Paris region and those in French overseas territories. In an Ile-de-France institution designed to hold 580 detainees, there were 928 detainees in March 2015, which represents an occupancy rate of 161%. In another, the occupancy rate was 165% overall, whereas it was 148% during the previous visit: 830 people were being held, while its theoretical capacity was 500 places. 3 Opinion dated 21 October 2009 concerning detainees' exercise of their right to correspondence. 22