> 1 OPJ per office yes yes no yes yes yes (6) yes Designated PC officer yes yes yes yes NP NP NP Except in cells designed for minors. No blankets available. Blankets no longer available in this police station at the time of the inspection. Contradictory testimonies: according to the officers blankets were given to persons in police custody; when questioned, the latter asserted that no blankets had been given to them. “Intermediate” search very common, as explained in note (3) of the previous table. In ten offices out of thirteen, there were at least two OPJs. A number of remarks are once again necessary with regard to these tables of a more qualitative character. Several additional criteria have been deliberately singled out with regard to different elements. a/ The first of these concerns available space. The number of cells and rooms for sobering-up was noted. In police stations of recent construction, no distinction is any longer made between the two. Persons in a state of public and manifest drunkenness taken to the police station (after a ritual visit to the hospital for the issuing of a certificate of refusal of hospitalisation) are therefore placed in cells also used for police custody. This confusion appears logical, since cells in these police stations are henceforth equipped with toilet bowls, which were previously reserved to rooms for sobering-up alone: it was probably considered that since the facilities are identical, there was no longer any reason for the distinction; this is even likely to simplify management, since drunken persons suspected of having committed crimes, initially left to sober up, may be placed in police custody after having regained their sobriety, without any need to change the place in which they are accommodated. However, this confusion might be regretted at the legal level: placement for sobering up is an administrative police measure; police custody takes place within the framework of law-enforcement operations aimed at the pursuit of offenders and criminals. The absence of specific rooms for sobering-up is therefore characteristic of the most recent police stations. In principle, collective cells are used when all of the individual cells are occupied. This distinction is also dependent upon the age of the police station concerned. The oldest stations only possess collective cells, which are few in number. The most recent stations have a majority of individual cells and sometimes, as in the case of Saint-Quentin and Vénissieux, do not possess any collective cells at all. However, placement in either type of cell may depend upon other factors, such as the sex of the persons in police custody, or the prevention of communication between persons charged in the same case. In general, minors are placed in separate cells from adults. However, in reality, the cells for minors mentioned in the above tables are not those in which children are actually placed (in principle next to the guard-room), but merely cells originally designed to be occupied exclusively by minors. Less than a third of the police stations and headquarters listed here possess such cells. Moreover, they do not possess any specific facilities and may even be less well-equipped than others (Pointe-à-Pitre). This might be regretted. 36