To the chagrin of the left, the National Assembly gave the green light, Wednesday evening July 12, to the request of the right-wing party Les Republicains to build 3,000 additional prison places by 2027.
The current program of “15,000” creation of places by 2027, launched in 2018, has fallen behind schedule and is “already undersized” points out a recent parliamentary report.
Mr. Ciotti had conditioned his favorable vote on the entire justice programming bill to the validation of such an increase in the number of places in detention, to reach a park of 78,000 places in 2027.
Currently, “sanctions” of imprisonment “are not applied” for lack of places, so “the only solution is to build”, he argued in the hemicycle. The presidential majority responded “poor”, emphasizing the issue of “dignity”, as more than 2,300 inmates sleep on mattresses on the floor due to prison overcrowding.
But these Renaissance, MoDem and Horizons deputies made it clear that these 3,000 additional places would be made “subject to the issuance by local authorities of the necessary planning permissions”.
“Protect society from dangerous individuals”
The Minister of Justice, Eric Dupond-Moretti, launched on this subject “a solemn, republican appeal, so that locally the attempts to obstruct” stop the construction of detention centers. It’s still “prison yes, but elsewhere,” he pointed out.
Likewise, with regard to closed educational centers, which LR would like to double by 2027: “too many elected officials are still reluctant to welcome [them],” said Mr. Dupond-Moretti. More generally, the Minister defended his “penal policy of firmness without demagoguery”.
Mr. Ciotti and Olivier Marleix, leader of the LR deputies, had written earlier on Wednesday to the Prime Minister, Elisabeth Borne, to demand a policy not “guided by a management of the shortage but by the need to protect society from dangerous individuals and to enforce the rule of law,” after the recent urban riots, according to this letter seen by Agence France-Presse.
The left strongly criticized these 3,000 more prison places: “The obsession with everything prison has struck”, lamented the socialist deputy of Saône-et-Loire Cécile Untermaier. With communist Elsa Faucillon (Hauts-de-Seine), she accused the presidential camp of “bargaining with the right” to get the bill passed. La France insoumise pinpointed a “reactionary arc between Macronie, the right and the far right”. The National Assembly deputies increased the request from 7,000 to 10,000 additional places. With 73,699 people incarcerated in French prisons, the number of detainees reached a new unprecedented peak on June 1 and for the fifth time in a few months.