WORLD WORLDWIDE EUROPE FRANCE News Journal Update - (en) France, Anarchosyndicalisme #182: About the French prison system. (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 As anarchists, we are hostile to the prison system of delinquents and

criminals. In other words, we are against prisons, which we consider to
provide an archaic answer to questions of delinquency and criminality,
in this society as in any other for that matter, including the one we
want: anti-capitalist, anti-state and anti-authoritarian therefore
egalitarian, libertarian and communist. Our position on this issue of
incarceration is poorly perceived in public opinion (this was also my
case for a long time when I only knew anarchism superficially) because
we only too rarely present the reasons for it and of this fact many
suppose, at best, an angelism and a naivety of the anarchists, at worst
our complicity with the delinquents and the criminals (1), which does
not help to join our cause or at least to attract sympathy of people who
can nevertheless share many of our criticisms of today's society and
many of our ideals and values.

Several studies[1]that have just been published on the mental health of
detainees in France allow us to support with various figures the
criticisms that we make of the prison system:

Prisoners have 3 times more psychiatric disorders than the general
population (And for the most part, more medical care in adequate
institutions than imprisonment. But, prison allows overcrowding and a
day of imprisonment only costs 105 euros per person to the State -32,000
euros a year - while a day in a psychiatric hospital costs him several
hundred euros a day...)
They suffer 8 times more from substance use disorders than the general
population
40% of prisoners have at least 2 psychiatric disorders compared to 15%
in the general population.
2/3 of men and 3/4 of women incarcerated suffer from at least one
disorder (psychiatric or addictological) when they leave prison, which
proves that imprisonment worsens the state of health of people rather
than treating them .
The suicide rate of prisoners is 7 times higher than in the general
population,
Prison staff are exhausted by chronic prison overcrowding (On April 1,
French prisons had 60,899 places for 73,080 inmates, which gave an
overall prison density of 120% compared to 117.1% a year ago. The
occupancy rate even reached 142.2% in remand centers where people
awaiting trial, who are therefore presumed innocent, are imprisoned,
those sentenced to short sentences or with a small remainder of their
sentence after conviction and those sentenced to long sentences awaiting
a free cell in the Detention Center or Central where individual celling
is the rule) increasingly violent and by the equally chronic lack of
resources (lack of supervisors, lack of doctors, lack of psychologists,
lack of teachers, lack of sports instructors, lack of prison integration
and probation advisers responsible in particular for arranging the
incarceration of prisoners and preparing for their release: reconnecting
or maintaining family ties, particularly with children, assembly with
prisoners of their applications for early release under duress or
conditional release, search for housing, work or training and
organization of the continuation of care and medical monitoring if
necessary for the prison exit
Although many CPIPs have been recruited in recent years, each still has
an average of 703 inmates to help, and sometimes up to 100 in the most
overcrowded remand centers, lack of rooms and sports grounds to offer
everyone a regular activity, lack of rooms for school, cultural and
recreational activities which must therefore be limited, lack of work in
workshops, which places many prisoners wishing to occupy themselves with
work and earn a little money[2], on endless waiting lists, etc.)

All this (plus the fact of mixing different types of delinquents and
criminals together, in the same place: prison, giving them almost all
the same penal response: deprivation of liberty, the cell, a little
access to the court walks, a little work, a little school, a little
sport, a little care and above all promiscuity with all types of
delinquents and criminals, and all types of psychological profiles,
unlike what d other countries which imprison with more moderation than
us and group together especially in different places which can be open
and in no way be prisons - people according to the common causes of
their being placed in the hands of justices which allows adequate help
to each other, and to avoid recidivism much more effectively than in
France[3]makes it clear that imprisonment is an inappropriate response
to the problems of delinquency and criminality and no one can be
surprised that 45% of people leaving prison commit a new act of
delinquency within 2 years of their release[4].

This is not all, according to the aforementioned studies, on the one
hand, nearly 100% of prisoners were victims of child abuse (including
37% of sexual violence for women and 13% for men) , knowing that this
mistreatment during childhood is a major source of psychiatric disorders
and that, on the other hand, 30% of incarcerated men and 40% of
incarcerated women were placed in foster families during their childhood
(which does not is not a criticism of the foster families, but the proof
that these children experienced a shock due to the break with their
parents), all things which lead to the conclusion, by the Syndicat de la
magistrature[5], that it is the disengagement of the State and local
authorities in the area of child protection, for budgetary reasons,
which has led many young people to delinquency, even to criminality, for
lack of having been helped and taken care of in useful times...

This is reminiscent of this "wonderful" policy of closing psychiatric
beds which began in the 1980s and was smoothly launched, in the name of
humanism, by so-called socialists and other elected representatives of a
pseudo-left, who claimed to better integrate people with psychiatric
disorders in this way, but who above all wanted to make budgetary
savings, as the perfect supporters of economic liberalism that they
were... Some of these people rejected from psychiatric hospitals,
according to the vagaries of their personal lives, found themselves on
the street or in emergency accommodation for the homeless, others in
prison... And, they still find themselves there, as the figures above
show...

In conclusion:
A large number of incarcerated people have no place in prison,
especially if they already suffer from psychiatric disorders at the time
of their arrest, because the prison system will bring them nothing
positive for their future and will not prepare them in nothing to a
peaceful return to society, which again risks being harmful for the
latter. Most incarcerated people should not end up in a state of
delinquency or criminality because it is their psychiatric disorders
that led them to commit their reprehensible act, should have been taken
care of upstream by society. Innovative countries have demonstrated that
different choices of penal policy, turning their backs on the priority
given to confinement by the most limited French oligarchy, bear fruit.
The conclusion is obvious: here as on other subjects, the reality of
things gives reason to the anarchists when they advocate, from the
current society, the end of the prison system, far from all naivety, all
angelism, and all complacency. for misdemeanors and crimes, but with a
natural compassion for victims of delinquency or crime and concern for
the welfare or betterment of all...

It remains nevertheless that it is the advent of an anarchist society,
therefore egalitarian, libertarian and united, which will most easily
and most quickly lead to the disappearance of the causes of a multitude
of offenses and crimes and therefore of these ...

To go further: Catherine Baker - Why should we punish? On the abolition
of the prison system (2004).

http://cntaittoulouse.lautre.net/spip.php?article1347
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