It would now be worth taking these various frustrations into consideration, rather than
leaving them to be dealt with by individuals as best they can at their own level. Moreover, from
the Contrôleur général’s point of view, an analysis of the reality on the ground is necessary
because these signs of “abandonment” constitute a threat to the quality with which the prison
administration fulfils the duties incumbent upon it.
2.4.2 Uniformity and Diversity: Removal from Prison for Treatment in Hospital
For a precise understanding of imprisonment, it is necessary to take one of its major contrasts
into account: uniformity and diversity in the approaches used towards prisoners. On the one
hand, prisoners are dealt with in an undifferentiated manner, regardless of the offence that they
have committed and whatever their personality, behaviour and level of physical fitness. On the
other hand, a personal approach, taking the latter criteria into consideration, may be used i n order
to determine how individual prisoners are dealt with.
The place accorded to each of these approaches is certainly a defining feature of any
criminal policy. From the perspective of a very broad view of the history of prisons, it can be
maintained that although, in the past, prisoners were in general dealt with in a very uniform
manner, today individualised approaches have been established in many regards.
However, one evidently needs to go into greater depth in order to analyse the unstable
balance between these two approaches to dealing with prisoners, which may be characterised, as
Caroline Touraut writes, as “collective management” and “personal management” 107.
The respective scope of each of these two approaches is naturally determined by prison
rules themselves: all un-convicted prisoners inside remand prisons and all convicted prisoners
inside penal institutions for definitively sentenced prisoners. Days always start at 7 o’clock in the
morning and doors are always closed for the night at 17:30 (except, specifically, in certain prisons
for definitively sentenced prisoners). All prisoners have more or less the same terms of access to
the telephone and the same facilities for the issue of visiting permits to their relations 108, the same
possibilities for use of the prison shop, identical remuneration for work etc. Prisoners are all
treated in an identical manner with regard to the management of their personal accounts, the
sending of parcels from outside, authorised and prohibited items, the practice of searches (by
means of frisking or body searches) etc. and, of course, the system of discipline and the “course
of enforcement of sentences” for convicted prisoners.
As far as “distinguishing” between persons is concerned, as we know, the rules separate
prisoners according to the criteria of age (minors, young adults, adults) and sex (men, women 109).
The penal code and the code of criminal procedure provide for distinct processes for the
enforcement of sentences (above all with regard to access to reduced sentencing measures)
according to the seriousness of offences and their nature (as well as security measures and orders
for medical treatment). The rules also distinguish “high-security prisoners” from other inmates.
Multiple processes of distinction have been highlighted110 which lead to the definition of
differences between inmates in prison: persons lacking adequate resources, those subject to
special surveillance at night, those who have special dietary requirements etc.; circulars, rules and
regulations are legion in this regard. Finally, quite apart from the traditional psychiatric
107
Caroline Touraut, La famille à l’épreuve de la prison [“Families and the ordeal of prison”], Paris, PUF, coll. “le
lien social”, November 2012, 293 p., p.43.
108
Except, once again, for differences been un-convicted and convicted prisoners.
109
th
With the exception of certain activities which can be accomplished together, since the Prisons Act of 24 November
2009 (article 28).
110
Jean-Marie Delarue, “Continuité et discontinuité de la condition pénitentiaire” [“Continuity and Discontinuity in
Imprisonment”], in Revue du MAUSS, no. 40, 2nd half-year 2012, “Sortir de (la) prison : entre don, abandon et
pardon” [“Release from Prison: between Gift, Desertion and Pardon”], 288p..
51
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