“A decision to have a prison in a city is also a decision not to hide it.”

Antoine Dulin. I’m often reluctant to talk about reintegration, which alludes to having to integrate. Yet, this term is used for integration through economic activity, integration through employment… it’s often just another one of those technocratic terms. In France, we also often evoke this notion of inclusion, the idea that people should not be treated differently but that society should instead adapt to difference. During the work we did in the CESE, I had considered talking about “reinclusion”, which is a word that does not exist. At long last we jumped on the bandwagon and made our very own portmanteau! It has the advantage of meaning something to the people who use it regularly and to people who have been marginalised or had their liberty taken away from them.

There are two sides to reintegration: on the one hand, the way in which people (re)embed themselves back into society; and on the other, the way in which society is able to welcome them back in. The first pillar of reintegration stands on the level of the individual. From the individual’s point of view, it’s not a new idea, a moment can come when the penny drops, so to speak. This can happen during the arrest, the sentencing, the imprisonment or through a meeting with someone. It might be a volunteer, a psychologist, an integration counsellor… it is a personal process, an individual realisation, a willingness to change or to break out of a spiral. During the work we did at CESE, I really liked this idea of desistance, that is the process of breaking out of a pattern of criminal behaviour. This process can be prompted by the sentence itself and by the conditions in prison. Desistance happens through meetings, meetings with counsellors, chaplains, peers: people who can listen, who start with who the person is, not what crime they committed.

The second pillar of reintegration poses a difficult question for society: how is society capable of welcoming the person back in? How does it accompany, help, support, motivate, or even, sometimes, catch them before a fall? How does society give a person what they need for their own desistance? We are still some way short of the mark. When they are released, a person can find themselves without access to guaranteed minimum welfare payments or accommodation, without a place to sleep… Working on yourself as a person is not everything. It is up to us to mark out enough of a path to help that person to reintegrate, to take their place in society again. It is up to us to walk alongside them throughout that time of change… It’s everyone’s business. Every element of society has to get involved. Businesses have the ability to take in these people at the end of their sentence, to welcome people who find themselves a little banged up by life and to allow them to make their way back into the world of work.

AD. We should talk about local authorities really, rather than cities. They have a role to play when a prisoner is released. A local hospital authority can use its housing stock to avoid putting people out on the street. It can involve other associations and social actors. In Lyon for example, there are associations like the Social Action Movement (Le Mouvement d’Action Sociale, Le Mas), the Matter Centres Association (L’Association Les Foyers Matter) and the Group for the Employment of Probationers (le Groupe pour l’emploi des probationnaires, Grep). Resources are rarely sufficient, but the city has highly competent local associations which work with people released from prison. We also have to take economic players into account: businesses, for example, through their “employerability”, can provide solutions for people whose path through education and the world of work has not been as linear as most. These are the actors we have to make aware of the issue. These local economic figures and community groups and are crucial to individuals’ (re)integration.

Shifting focus to the incarceration itself, we have to highlight that choosing where to place prisons is not a neutral decision. We cannot build facilities far from everything, far from transport networks and sources of employment. When we do that, we don’t just take away a person’s freedom, but what grounds them in a community and the means of their reintegration as well.
In France, some detention facilities are still inaccessible by public transport, far away from everything: Joux-la-Ville prison or Moulins-Yzeure prison for example. Yet, we understand the importance of maintaining family ties for incarcerated people who are also parents, fathers and mothers. A more local example would be Lyon-Corbas prison. It is difficult to access. It is located in an industrial area, and it would be worth asking questions about the ties between that facility and the economic actors that nevertheless sit all around it. We might be able to think of a few different inside-outside links. A minimum security prison in the city centre of Lyon also comes to mind. Locating the facility there allows its prisoners to leave to go to work in the morning and come back in the evening. So they serve their sentence, but are still embedded into the social and economic fabric of that community. The time they spend in prison is integrated into an urban space. A decision to have a prison in a city is also a decision not to hide it. The Saint-Paul prison (Lyon)¹ was right in the city centre. You could hear the prisoners’ cries. That was compelling. Feeling its presence there made everyone cognisant of the issue. It encouraged the city’s residents to be much more aware of it. It’s about not just turning a blind eye to our prisons, but being aware of what’s happening in them.

AD. Despite everything I can see some progress. It was the first time that such a diverse group of members of civil society (actors from trade unions, associations and other economic, social and political fields) worked together on the issue of prisoner reintegration. The awareness is there, it has been shared and now it needs to be nurtured. I hope there will be a report to follow on from that one to take stock of what has already been set in motion.
For example, France is starting to make progress on the issue of work in prison. Improvements to working conditions are underway. We debated a lot on the issue of contracts and labour rights. It was no walk in the park, but now it is set down in law that working prisoners have legal protection, health insurance and unemployment benefits. That is progress. There are still huge weak points, notably the existence of piecework.
Another thing was the development of community service. This has a role in changing how prisons are seen. Here we should highlight the work of the Community Service and Professional Integration Agency (l’Agence du travail d’intérêt général et de l’insertion professionnelle, ATIGIP), thanks to which more and more businesses are going to be able to facilitate community service (travaux d’intérêt général, TIG).

Nonetheless, there are lots of things which have been left untouched. I remain convinced that we need to work on a prisoner’s path to reintegration from the moment their sentence begins. The judge and every prison official must point people towards education, their rights, healthcare, training and employment from the very start of their sentence. We have a lot of work ahead of us. How do we inscribe this path into the law? There are mechanisms in place for children under the care or supervision of social services and for elderly dependants. Something built on a similar principle could be envisaged for prisoners.

The second significant area to work on that I can see is ensuring the participation of incarcerated people. I am convinced that if we give people the opportunity to act, that will play a role in that all-important “penny drop” moment. It is the basis of public education to teach people not to think of themselves as less than nothing, but instead as people with real value, competencies, abilities, something to say and so a place in society. We need to do more to give prisoners the right to express themselves, this is something which is cruelly lacking in prison. To me that needs to be part of a prison’s whole purpose.

The person who leaves prison should not be the same one who arrived. Right now, prison does not have this transformative power. Frankly, right now prisons manage what comes in, what leaves, and inventory. There is no hint of a prison which supports, trains and transforms people. I would like to hear people talk about training and education instead of the flow of prisoners in and out, incidents and which prisoners need to be sent where. Whether we’re talking about teaching citizenship, culture, or facilitating sporting activities… Staff are just bogged down in this daily management of moving prisoners here and there, incidents and emergencies. We need to take a serious look at how prisons work. We have to rethink buildings, architecture and locations in order to put security and reintegration on the same playing field. In France, however, perhaps we should start the movement by building the Release Support Structures (Structures d’accompagnement à la sortie, SAS).