In response, the CGLPL has been informed of the setup within the long-term detention centre, since September 2017, of a procedure entailing a shift on the fourth Wednesday of every month, from 2pm to 6pm, enabling fifteen detained patients to benefit from ophthalmological care. 1.4 The barriers to compensation to civil parties The CGLPL's attention has been drawn to the fact that prisoners in a remand prison have no way of compensating civil parties owing to a shortage of staff for carrying out such transactions, the consequence being that they are unable to provide any relevant supporting documents during sentence adjustment or remission proceedings. The Chief Inspector contacted the institution's director to find out what measures had been taken to resolve this shortcoming and enable prisoners to make these payments and obtain the relevant supporting documents. In response, the institution's director confirmed that the personal accounts administration had encountered problems in handling debts in terms of compensating civil parties because there had been no official present since February 2016. He maintained that prisoners wishing to compensate civil parties were systematically received by the administrator and that a letter was sent out to the civil parties concerned. During new talks held with the institution's director, the Chief Inspector asked whether the judicial authorities in charge of considering sentence enforcement or adjustment measures had been notified of the difficulties encountered and whether the processing of voluntary payments was now effective. She was pleased to hear in response that a deputy administrator had been assigned to the personal accounts administration so as to relieve its workload and be able to effectively meet all of the requests made by prisoners for paying back civil parties. Furthermore, the sentence enforcement department and prison rehabilitation and probation service (SPIP) were informed during the various sentence enforcement committee meetings and adversarial debates of the difficulties encountered by the institution in carrying out payments to compensate civil parties, to ensure that the prisoners concerned are not penalised. 1.5 Irregular provision for indigent prisoners One person assigned to a long-term detention centre, recognised as being indigent, has alerted the Chief Inspector's attention to the cash aid he received, namely ten euros, and the fact that he was not given any stationery (envelope, pen, etc.), which is nevertheless necessary for maintaining ties with the outside. The Chief Inspector referred a request for information to the institution's director on the provision arrangements with regard to indigent prisoners, and on the amount of cash aid handed out and types of aid in kind available. In response, the management confirmed that a ten-euro cash aid was indeed granted to indigent prisoners and that some of them received more in connection with efforts made while in detention, such as taking part in school lessons and education. Following a reminder of the regulations by the prison administration department and talks held with the institution's director, the procedure for granting cash aids to indigent prisoners now complies with the applicable texts. Regarding aids in kind, the institution director's response states that stationery including a pen, pad of A4 paper, two stamps and two envelopes is handed to each new arrival and that indigent prisoners get a monthly provision of ten stamps. The director indicated that the new contract with the private service provider did not include renewing the pen or pad of paper. 79

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