OPINIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS OF THE FRENCH CGLPL need to provide treatment for the persons in question cannot mask this reality, contrary to what the staff providing treatment sometimes say – though this in no way means classifying a hospital as a “prison”. Such deprivation of liberty must therefore be surrounded by all necessary guarantees, particularly since the persons concerned do not necessarily find it easy to assert their legal rights. This is where the Contrôleur général des lieux de privation de liberté becomes involved. As it happens, such deprivation of liberty can only be maintained if – and only if – two conditions are met: firstly that a serious threat to law and order has been established; and secondly, that treatment such as that provided in hospital, is required. 3/ At the present time, four elements are disrupting the balance that needs to be achieved. 4/ Firstly, the management and medical staff of the establishments concerned should be particularly vigilant regarding the option open to persons undergoing compulsory admission to hospital, of disputing the measure applicable to them, before the competent court. This is not the case where, firstly, the rights that people must be informed of as soon as they are admitted to hospital are often presented in abstract terms, and indicated expeditiously; in other cases, such notification is itself deferred. Secondly, in cases where recourse to a lawyer is not always immediately available, and certain psychiatrists take the view that a time of adaptation to hospital is required, the latter then decide the length of this period on the basis of the patient’s condition: however, while a phase of this nature can be prescribed, it cannot be applied to the lawyer, access to whom must be unconditional. And finally, it does not apply in cases where the person admitted to hospital is not told – which is the case in around one half of the establishments visited so far – that they are entitled, under the legislation governing patients’ rights, to nominate a “trusted person” who will be responsible for “accompanying them in the action they take”: this person can provide effective assistance to patients who, having been admitted under the regime of compulsory admission to hospital, undoubtedly pose a threat to law and order but in many cases, at the same time are very vulnerable and sometimes have no family support network whatsoever. 5/ Secondly, in contrast to the policy initiated during the 1960s, nowadays the doors of a growing number of psychiatric hospitals are 78