While the Code of Criminal Procedure lays down the principle of placement in individual cells for both untried prisoners, defendants placed on remand207 and convicted prisoners208, only prisoners placed in long-stay prisons and long-stay detention centres – with many exceptions however in the case of the latter – occupy their cells on their own. In remand prisons, the sharing of cells by two or three persons, or even more in cell-dormitories, is the rule. Detention centres for illegal immigrants never provide individual rooms. In psychiatric hospitals, hospitalisations still occur in double or triple rooms. In one of the largest institutions in the Parisian region, units comprise “dormitories” of four or five beds, devoid of bathroom facilities. One thus ascertains that the norms of accommodation facilities for medical departments vary from one special medical field to the next. While in medical, surgical and obstetrics wards individual rooms have become the rule, this is far from being case in psychiatry, as though persons suffering from mental illness could not lay claim to comfort equivalent to that of other patients. The explanation appears to be drawn from their condition, which would apparently render them unconscious to their material environment. Families do not have any say in the often dilapidated conditions of accommodation, while sectorial divisions prohibit the possibility of choice between units. Nonetheless, the lengths of stays in psychiatric departments are very considerably greater than in other special medical fields, which should lead, on the contrary, to the provision of considerably better living conditions. Yet, prolonged and intense shared living throughout the length of a day with other persons leads, according to circumstances, behaviours and personalities, to forced positions of withdrawal or, on the contrary, indulgence, which are sure to be sources of mental distress. Moreover, the occupation of a room or a cell by several persons sometimes leads to frequent changes for the latter persons, in order to adapt the occupants to the various different requirements of compatibility: pathologies, convictions, age, sex, temper etc. Each arrival in the department or institution may lead to changes in the distribution of inmates in order to respect the whole of the constraints involved as best as possible, to the detriment of efforts that the occupants may have made in order to adapt themselves to the premises. The use of non-individual cells and rooms should be prohibited. Moreover, the form of the cell or room should provide several possibilities for arranging the furniture in order to promote personal appropriation of the premises. For all that, individual occupation of rooms and cells should not be established to the detriment of their surface area. The Building and Residential Code (Code de la construction et de l’habitation) provides for a minimum surface area per person of 10 m² beyond the first four inhabitants in the same apartment209. This surface area should be compulsory for cells and rooms, to which the surface area of the bathroom facilities with which they should be equipped also has to be added. 207 Article 716 of the code of criminal procedure “Persons indicted or charged and any defendant placed on remand are placed in individual cells.” 208 Article 717-2 of the Code of Criminal Procedure "Convicted prisoners are subject to individual imprisonment day and night in remand prisons, and solitary confinement exclusively at night in institutions for convicted prisoners after having undergone a period of in-cell observation if necessary". 209 Article R .111-2 of the Building Code "the inhabitable surface area and volume of a dwelling shall be of at least 14 square metres and 33 cubic metres per inhabitant planned at the time of drawing up the building programme for the first four inhabitants and of at least 10 square metres and 23 cubic metres per additional inhabitant beyond the fourth". Article 4 of decree (décret) 2220 of 30th January 2002 concerning the characteristics of decent accommodation: "The accommodation possesses at least one master room having an inhabitable surface area of at least 9 square metres and a height under the ceiling of at least 2.20 metres that is to say an inhabitable volume of at least 20 cubic metres”. The DAP 88G05G norms of 16th March 1988 provide that prison cells with a surface area of less than or equal to 11 m² can only be occupied by a single person. 130