France: attempts to release prisoners early are unsuccessful

Today’s post is by Professor Martine Herzog-Evans who shares findings from a recent study into a French initiative to release prisoners on parole more efficiently in order to reduce the prison population, a subject of particular interest for the Parole Board for England and Wales in its attempt to tackle its back-log.

“Bad Fast” versus qualitative resettlement¶

I conducted a research study from October 2014 to December 2016 with a team of 20 Master students in criminal law and criminology at the University of Reims in four different sites (four courts’ jurisdictions and four prisons) which was funded by the Mission Droit et Justice.

Our goal was to study the implementation of a then new law (The Taubira Act, August 14, 2014), which, inter alia created a new release procedure called ‘release under constraints’ (libération sous contrainte, LSC) for prisoners sentenced to up to five years (by far the vast majority) reaching a two thirds point in their sentence. This new procedure had the following key features. It was meant to be fast track by saving time on due process (débat contradictoire: DC) which it bypassed, but this ‘devoid of due process’ LSC procedure still ran parallel (and in competition with) to the traditional DC release procedure. In both LSC and DC cases release was decided upon by a French quasi-problem-solving court (juge de l’application des peines : JAP). The difference is that the due process approach is a hearing with an attorney and prosecutor while LSC release decisions were made in the context of a prison administrative commission without any appearance or attorney.

LSC was additionally expected to release prisoners faster than DC because both MoJ and Prison service internal circulars ordered probation officers not to prepare prisoners at all for their resettlement; thereby contrasting with DC where such support is still, if minimally, present. This uncovered the true aim of law reformers, that is to free as much prison space as possible rather to contribute to through the gate prisoners’ resettlement.

The research study¶

The study contained three main research questions.

How was LSC implemented and what were the implementation gaps and their causes?

What impact had legitimacy of justice-procedural justice (LJ-PJ) in this context?

Did LSC contribute to optimal re-entry, particularly for short sentences?

The methodology comprised, inter alia: a legal analysis of LSC; observation/immersion of all LSC and DC procedures which took place in the four sites from October 2014 to December 2016; attendance at institutional meetings and other informal gatherings; interviews with all eight JAP judges, with other practitioners (probation officers, prosecutors etc.), and with 48 prisoners who had gone through LSC or DC procedures or who had refused to consent to LSC. We also analysed 22 probation reports and a great number of JAPs rulings.

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