Cases are often referred to the Contrôleur Général with regard to the situation of persons who have been waiting, for more than nine months, for their assignment to a penal institution for convicted prisoners. Indeed, actual transfer of persons may occur many months after notification of the assignment decision, it having been impossible for the decision to be implemented, due to lack of available space in the selected penal institution for convicted prisoners. In the Parisian region (in the broad sense of the term), contrary to the declared objectives, the opening of new institutions198 has not made it possible to reduce particularly long waiting times; in August 2013, the waiting periods for assignment to the long-term detention centres of Meaux-Chauconin and Melun were of around two years. The institutions of the South-East of France are also particularly congested: it is necessary to wait eighteen months for assignment to the penal institutions for convicted prisoners of Avignon-Le Pontet, Salon-de-Provence and Tarascon, and twenty-four months for transfer to Toulon-La Farlède199. Although the prisons administration Department keeps an estimated table of waiting times for decisions coming within its jurisdiction, no information is available with regard to assignment waiting times for persons coming under the authority of the DISP. Heads of institutions are in the dark on this point and are often unable to provide reliable information to the persons for whom they are responsible. According to the central administration, the Interregional Department’s waiting times for assignment are in general shorter, the turnover of prisoners being much larger in view of the length of the sentences pronounced against them. The Contrôleur Général, who has taken up cases with the DISPs on the question of waiting times for assignment, observes that the management of places and persons remains particularly obscure. It is not clear that the chronological order of assignment decisions is respected in the organisation of transfers. Moreover, the quality of relations between heads of institutions and the services of the security and detention Department of the DISP can prove decisive for the “negotiation” of more or less rapid departures, more or less in accordance with the prisoner’s wishes. Thus prisoners may have legitimate grounds to raise questions concerning the mechanisms and approaches implemented with regard to choice and waiting period for initial assignment. The state of overcrowding of remand prisons may, moreover, lead to persons being transferred to penal institutions for convicted prisoners, to the detriment of their personal situation and their stated wishes: “it must be remembered that the waiting list is very long for assignment to the CP of Avignon Le Pontet […] Mr X agrees to a compromise for assignment to the CD of Tarascon”; “a transfer decision to the long-term detention centre of Châteaudun was made with regard to Mr Y. He had requested the CP of Réau in priority, and that of Meaux as second choice. However, the waiting times for Meaux are currently of around fifteen months and those for Réau, which are tending to become shorter, remain longer than eight months”; “Indeed, Mr X was assigned to the long-term detention centre of Neuvic [in order to] have the benefit, in the shortest possible time, of the regime offered by long-term detention centres. At the time, Mr X had not produced any document proving family ties in Belgium”200. One person having requested a transfer prison of Poitiers-Vivonne for the maintenance of family ties was informed of an initial 198 Prisons of Réau, Lille-Annœullin, Le Havre and Condé-sur-Sarthe. It should be noted that these approximate waiting times are calculated as from the assignment decision taken by the prisons administration and not from the date at which the sentence became definitive. 200 Mr X's orientation file mentioned a request for assignment to an institution in the North or Pas-de-Calais in order to be closer to his wife and daughter domiciled in Belgium. 199 124