providing another view of the imprisonment of persons serving long sentences.” The CGLPL therefore recommends that these initiatives should be brought into general use. However, for the administration, the need for persons serving long sentences to be able to make their living areas their own is not self-evident. Long-stay prisons all have established places within accommodation buildings or exercise yards – known as “hovels” (“gourbis”) in some institutions and “casinos” elsewhere… – which the staff do not enter when prisoners are present. In most cases, the management of these places is deliberately left to prisoners, in a subtle game of appropriation by the prison and tolerance on the part of the administration, the latter assenting not to keep a close watch on them but, after the occurrence of incidents, regularly having to take action, or even deciding to close them. This allows convicted prisoners to have an area of liberty and sociability, considered essential when being deprived of liberty for such long periods. As far as staff are concerned, certain officers consider that these places provide a “pressure release valve” needed for the management of prisons catering for persons serving long sentences; others, on the other hand, denounce their characteristic of being hidden from view, which for them constitutes a festering source of insecurity in the heart of the prison. The absence of official recognition of these areas by the administration is manifested in their very poor condition, no renovation or maintenance work ever being planned for them. Making them official would, moreover, make it possible to regulate their operation to a greater extent, which is currently characterised by a form of co-optation among the persons allowed to go to them. 1.2.4 Right to the Free Management of Personal Property The recognition of prisoners’ autonomy should extend to the management of property they possess inside and outside of the prison. Second-hand purchases, loans and gifts are prohibited with regard to IT equipment 69, but in practice authorised for games consoles 70. The CGLPL set out its views on this issue in particular in a report drafted following on-site verifications concerning IT access in a prison in the West of France 71. The CGLPL considers that imprisoned persons should be able to resell, offer as gifts or lend the whole of their property, including their IT equipment, after the performance of checks on the equipment concerned and verifications with regard to the motivations for such acts. The right to make gifts and loans is related to the question of ownership documents. Indeed, it appears that, in certain institutions, quotes and invoices are not drawn up in the 69 Circular issued by the prisons administration department on 13th October 2009 concerning access to IT facilities for persons in custody. 70 The only games consoles authorised in prison are no longer produced today. 71 In this report, the CGLPL recommended in particular “an examination of the possibilities enabling wider access to the IT tool for the most impoverished and isolated prisoners, by means of the possibility of lending IT equipment for example. It hopes that the current regulations will be amended in order to authorise gifts and second-hand purchases, this equipment being, in any case, subject to control by the prisons administration. It should in no way be possible for any inadequacies of these means of control to stand in the way of the acquisition of this second-hand equipment”. It also noted that: “foreign prisoners with little or no command of French would certainly benefit from measures of this kind, enabling, amongst other things, the use of French language-learning software". 96