Opinion of 17th June 201140 concerning
supervision of monitoring and security staff
1/ Persons held in custody must not be denied their human rights,
and therefore conditions must be imposed in such places, relating to
the legislation applicable, the material condition of the premises, the
way in which loss of liberty is organised, the instructions issued by
management and the ways in which employees are trained to behave.
The Contrôleur général des lieux de privation de liberté (CGLPL) is
attentive to these various aspects, in accordance with his remit under
Article 9 of the Law of 30th October 2007.
2/ However, he has consistently indicated, from the outset of his
mission, that respect for human rights in prison, in police custody,
detention centres or in the context of hospitalisation without consent,
is also dependent on staff working conditions. The level of commitment
demonstrated by staff, the length of service, the quality of the initial
and in-service training provided, the difficult nature of the tasks
involved, the isolation suffered by some staff, the distances involved
in travelling to and from work, the relationships maintained within
the professional environment, and the development or absence of
technological alternatives to human presence (see the report issued by
the Contrôleur général for 2009, Chapter 3 on videosurveillance) are all
significant factors in apprehending the missions to be accomplished.
Consequently, insofar as these missions still place a high degree of
emphasis on human relationships, when it comes to loss of liberty,
the relationship between the staff running an establishment and the
persons held captive there are determined to a significant extent by
these factors.
3/ A number of more topical factors are also pertinent to this interrelationship between human rights and working conditions, which is
growing ever closer. The recruitment of a number of younger staff over
the past twenty or twenty-five years, in the wake of concerted efforts
to do so, coupled with their rising levels of education, the increasing
numbers of women working in this field, the arrangements made in
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Published in the Journal Officiel de la République française of 12th July 2011, text
n°81.
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