Opinion of 30th June 201021 concerning the care and management of transsexual prisoners Pursuant to the provisions of Article  6 of the law n°2007-1545 of 30th October 2007, several prisoners applied to the Contrôleur général des lieux de privation de liberté (CGLPL), describing their feeling of belonging to the opposite sex and the difficulties encountered in obtaining medical treatment. In the course of the lengthy and detailed investigation which ensued, several actions were taken: two inspectors interviewed first the prisoners concerned, then health professionals and managerial and supervisory staff within the prison administration. They discussed the matter with representatives of the directorate of prison administration and the directorate general of care provision in order to identify more clearly the nature of the difficulties encountered. Lastly, documents produced by other bodies and independent administrative authorities, such as the High Authority against Discrimination and for the Promotion of Equality (HALDE) and the High Authority for Health (HAS), were consulted. This enabled three findings to be made: • • • 21 The prisoners concerned received no detailed information about the arrangements for providing them with long-term medical care and underestimated the effects this would have on their conditions of detention. At best, this information was supplied to them belatedly. In any event, they had no access to relevant care provision available outside the prison. Only one of them was able to be included in a protocol run by a specialist team, but only more than three years after taking the first steps. The prison regimes for these persons vary because, in the absence of guidelines, each prison director assesses the measures to be implemented on a case-by-case basis (whether or not the wearing of women’s clothes is allowed, whether beauty products can be bought at the prison shop, normal detention or isolation, etc). Published in the Journal Officiel de la République française of 25th July 2010, text n°22. 47