Three years after a historic judgment pinning it for the overcrowding of its prisons, France was again condemned, Thursday, July 6, by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) for “the conditions of detention suffered” by three inmates of Fresnes prison. When they seized the Court in 2018, the three applicants (two French and a Surinamese) were detained in this penitentiary center in the suburbs of Paris where “the overcrowding rate was 197%” on January 1, 2019, according to a press release. the court based in Strasbourg.
Imprisoned between 2016 and 2019, they were there at the same time as detainees who, with several others incarcerated in French prisons, had France condemned in January 2020 for prison overcrowding, recalls the European Court. In this previous judgment, very severe, the ECHR had then pointed to the existence of a “structural problem” and had recommended to the French authorities “to consider the adoption of general measures” to put an end to overcrowding and improve living conditions. detention.
In this new decision issued on Thursday, “the Court sees no reason to reach a different conclusion” and “therefore considers that there has been a violation of Articles 3 and 13 of the European Convention on Human Rights” (prohibition inhuman or degrading treatment and the right to an effective remedy), in particular “due to the conditions of detention suffered by the applicants as a result of prison overcrowding”, writes the ECHR in its press release. In total, France will have to pay more than 46,000 euros to the three applicants.
In addition, some applicants contested the application of a full search regime upon leaving the visiting rooms in Fresnes. But, on this point, the Court ruled against them, noting that the plaintiffs had not exhausted all legal remedies before the French courts, one of the conditions necessary for referral to the ECHR. In particular, they had at their disposal the “referred liberty procedure”, provided for by French administrative law, and which “effectively made it possible, in a number of cases, to remedy the violation of Article 3 of the Convention with regard to of the practice of integral excavations”, notes the European court.
