Question 12301 — places of deprivation of liberty

Summary

Mr. Aly Diouara draws the attention of the Keeper of the Seals, Minister of Justice, to the worsening of suicides in detention and to the persistent shortcomings in the prevention and traceability of deaths in prison. The most recent data available show a worrying dynamic: 157 suicides of people placed in prison in 2023, compared to 139 in 2022, an increase of 12.9% in one year, with a rate of 17.5 suicides per 10,000 people under arrest. Beyond the level, these deaths are not distributed randomly: they concentrate on times and places that the State directly controls. The first week of incarceration is a critical period, with a six-fold increase in suicide risk and one in nine suicides occurring during this week. Pretrial detention also constitutes an area of ​​major vulnerability, with a rate twice as high and almost half of the suicides that occur there. Above all, the situation in the disciplinary unit directly questions prison doctrine: Public Health France indicates that 14% of suicides occur in the disciplinary unit while less than 1% of detained people are there on average and that half of these suicides take place in the first 24 hours; the management of the prison administration lists, for 2023, 23 suicides in the disciplinary unit, or around 15% of the total. These figures are all the more alarming as prevention seems to be hitting an organizational wall: among the suicides analyzed in 2017-2021, 46% had been preceded by at least one attempt, 60% of people had consulted the health unit the previous week and a suicidal risk was identified by the prison administration in 44% of cases. Finally, the prevention is deployed in a material environment which is deteriorating: the general controller of places of deprivation of liberty notes a rapid increase in overcrowding and mattresses on the ground, which mechanically weakens security, access to care and the capacity for real surveillance. In this context and while deaths in custody can give rise to disputes and suspicion when factual elements are missing accessible and traceable, it appears essential to strengthen transparency and conservation of evidence (surrounds, decisions, interventions, possible surveillance images) in order to guarantee trust, the effectiveness of investigations and the improvement of practices. He therefore asks what immediate national measures the Government intends to impose to secure the first week of incarceration and pre-trial detention, identified as periods of massive excess risk; what national doctrine it intends to establish concerning the disciplinary unit, in order to prevent placements leading to excess mortality and what guarantees it intends to establish (systematic medico-psychological evaluation, contraindications, alternatives, control) with regard to the concentration of suicides in the first 24 hours. How does he explain that, despite identifying the risk in a significant proportion of cases and despite recent medical contacts, suicides still occur and what concrete changes (staffing, organization, health-prison coordination) will be undertaken to bridge the gap between identification and protection? What decisions does it intend to take to reduce prison overcrowding, a major element of disorganization and aggravation of risks, and according to what timetable? What What new guarantees does it intend to provide on the traceability of serious events and deaths in detention (procedures for conservation of elements, registers, access to essential information) and on the annual publication of detailed and transparent data on deaths (categories, locations, administrative and legal consequences)? He wants to know his position on the subject.

Machine translation from French. The official text remains authoritative.

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