Question 14296 — places of deprivation of liberty

Summary

Ms. Andrée Taurinya draws the attention of the Keeper of the Seals, Minister of Justice, to the arrangements for organizing the vote of detainees incarcerated in penitentiary establishments during the municipal elections in March 2026. This ballot was held a few months after the entry into force of the law of July 18, 2025 relating to the right to vote of detainees. This law returns to the progress of the law of December 27, 2019 relating to engagement in local life and proximity to public action, law known as “Lecornu”, carried at the time by the current head of Government. The right to vote of prisoners had been favored by the possibility given to the prison population to vote by correspondence. The participation rate of detained people increased from 2% (for elections prior to 2018) to 22% for the European elections in 2024 and 19% during the early legislative elections that followed. Failing to organize the holding of the vote within the penitentiary establishment itself by providing a polling station and dedicated assessors, such a reform had produced positive consequences on the civic investment of those detained and therefore on their integration into the framework of a desistance process. It is with great surprise that the Parliamentarians attached to the democratic vitality of this country have welcomed the Senate bill aimed at restricting the postal vote of prisoners only to the European and presidential elections, as well as the referendum. Some municipalities had to deal with a penitentiary establishment located on their territory and sometimes with several hundred potential voters able to have an impact on the outcome of a ballot. Only voting by proxy or the possibility of requesting leave to vote on an election day was possible for local constituency elections: local and legislative elections. The fierce opponents of this text, of which the MP was one, saw it as a way of bringing the electoral participation of these full-fledged citizens back to the floor of 2% prior to the year. 2018. Such a turnaround amounted to treating detainees as sub-citizens in the run-up to local elections by multiplying administrative procedures, thereby making it more difficult to exercise the right to vote. The day after the municipal elections, the daily and regional press noted that the same causes produced the same effects. Local participation of detained people in elections has collapsed. The Telegram reports in an article from March 22, 2026 that only 19 inmates of the Lorient-Ploemeur penitentiary center voted in the first round of elections for an establishment comprising 379 people incarcerated on election day. Only two furloughs were granted in the first round and 17 detainees were able to find a representative allowing them to make a power of attorney. In fact, accused prisoners cannot benefit from a leave of absence found themselves materially unable to exercise their right to vote. The same observations are made by Le Républicain Lorrain. In Metz, the regional daily notes that those responsible for the special office waited in vain for the kraft envelopes containing the votes of the prisoners after the reform which took place in the summer of 2025: only two proxies were recorded from the prisons for these local elections. In Saint-Étienne, a assessor at the polling station for detained persons and French nationals living abroad indicated to the MP that no proxy was expected for the first round of voting. Consequently, she asks him to please publish the figures for the electoral participation of people detained for the last municipal elections. She would like to know in particular how many proxies have been made in the different penitentiary establishments as well as the number of leave permissions granted to vote during the elections of March 15 and 22, 2026. Finally, she asks him if he intends to indicate the measures he will take to remedy the announced explosion in abstention maintained by the reform of voting methods in detention.

Machine translation from French. The official text remains authoritative.

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