Since 2009, prisoners have been obliged to participate in at least one.

Most of the time, labour laws do not apply to those in prison. For instance, there is no minimum wage and no work contracts.

There are three sources of employment in prison:

• General services, which refers to the work done by prisoners to keep the prison operating (maintenance, food services, cleaning of public areas). 13.4% of prisoners worked in general services in 2016.
• Production areas, which are operated by the Prison Industrial Management Service (Régie industrielle des établissements pénitentiaires (RIEP)) and managed by the Prison Employment Service (Service de l’emploi pénitentiaire (SEP)). This service organises the production of goods and services by prisoners and ensures their sale and distribution (computing, computer-aided manufacturing, printing, woodwork, garment manufacturing, metalwork, agriculture, etc.). 1.5% of prisoners worked for the SEP in 2016. 25 out of 186 prisons have a total of 46 workshops.
• Concession work, which refers to prisoners working for private companies that set up production areas inside prisons. These usually entail simple manual operations (stuffing envelopes, packaging, etc.). 13.2% of prisoners worked for concessions in 2016.

Prisoners can work independently or for an employer. The above-mentioned forms of employment only give access to a job to one-quarter of prisoners.

Prison work can have the following benefits: prisoners can earn an income to use in the canteen or to support their family, they can leave their cell and stay active, and they get the opportunity to meet other prisoners. One prisoner described it thus: “When you work, it gives you a totally new perspective. You can bond with other people, sometimes even with non-prisoners. Work has really helped me deal with my sentence”.

The Prison Act of 24 November 2009 provides for the implementation of a contract and the end of piecework, but these provisions have not yet been fully applied. On 1 January 2017, the least-qualified positions were paid €1.95 an hour. The Controller-General for Places of Deprivation of Liberty (Contrôleure générale des lieux de privation de liberté (CGLPL)) issued an advisory in February 2017 denouncing the lack of respect for basic standards. In the same advisory, she underscored the many legal deficiencies of prison work that constitute human rights abuses. In a 2017 advisory, the National Consultative Commission on Human Rights recommended that the right to a work contract be applied during detention. It also called for the creation of a national agency for prisoner employment that would both act as the employer and seek out contractors.

In general, prisoners are poorly educated. In 2016, one in five prisoners (20.2%) failed reading tests, one in two had no school leaving qualification (49%) and more than three-quarters only had vocational training (81%).

Access to online information (individual requests or for training purposes) is lacking and is subject to prisons’ security restrictions. The gap between the restrictions imposed by the prison services and technological developments is glaring. This makes it difficult for prisoners to reintegrate into society, especially those serving long sentences.

Spiritual needs are not always met and prisoners are not always permitted to keep their religious articles with them. Furthermore, few prisons cater to the special food requirements mandated by some religions.

According to the 2017 CGLPL report, there is no Muslim chaplain at Cherbourg Prison, meaning that Muslims can only interact with Catholic chaplains. Guards also have problems obtaining Muslim religious articles, such as the Koran and prayer mats.

Some chaplains, namely those of the Muslim faith, have pointed out that in trying to prevent radicalisation in prison, the prison service has made certain expectations of chaplains that do not fall within their remit and may even be prejudicial.
Following a decree on 5 May 2017, future chaplains of all religions are required to receive training in civics, a move that not all chaplains support. While one Christian pastor stressed that “the fight against radicalisation is not our responsibility”, Hassan el-Alaoui Talibi, the chief Muslim prison chaplain in France, maintained that it “will be good for our chaplains”. On the whole, the chaplains said that they should have been consulted first and they also questioned the training methods.

Outside assistance comes in many forms: visits, sport, cultural, and religious activities, teaching, material support, legal aid, preventive health care, etc. Some activities take place outside of the prisons, such as welcoming families and loved ones waiting in the visiting rooms and the activities surrounding release (reintegration into the workplace, housing, etc.).

In 2017, the prison service signed agreements with 23 associations, on a national scale. The agreements covered different domains: legal aid, visits, preventive health care, reintegration, etc. Most of them have financial protocols in the form of annual grants, the amount of which varies from year to year.

These programmes are usually run by volunteers.