France: reintegration is everyone’s business

Antoine Dulin. The ESEC typically works on economic, social and environmental questions. This is the first time that the Prime Minister has referred to it directly on a justice topic, and reintegration at that. In the 75 years that the ESEC has existed, this is a historic first. Regarding the notice that we rendered, it is separated into four sections. The first relates to public opinion. The members of the ESEC are not experts on the subject, and they were in the same situation as any citizen, with the same preconceived ideas. Five months of work, which included hearings with inmates and former inmates, enabled them to gain awareness that something else could be done with the prison system. There are quite a few stereotypes. Few people know that the average detention length is nine months, that the majority of prisoners serve short sentences, or that few present a danger to society. We estimate that this is the case for 10 to 15% of them. Life imprisonment represents 2% of sentences. Naturally, the question of release of all these individuals arises.

The second point of our notice is the development of alternatives to detention. Custodial sentences remain the standard sentence. For whom? For everyone.

Although the judges hand down these sentences, we must not judge them, as they are supported by public opinion. In 2008, 72% of survey respondents assigned the mission of reintegration to prisons, as opposed to only 48% in 2018. Prison is imagined as a safety tool but not as one that enables reintegration. This social debate simply does not take place.

The third part of our notice concerns the tools given to inmates to enable reintegration. This process includes working on oneself and considering one’s actions, which are such personal aspects that we did not look at them much. We focused on another aspect, that of the person’s circumstances: access to social rights and education, such as French language learning, and access to work and occupational training. All inmates must have access to all of this, without discrimination. Yet only 28% of them gain access to a job and only 16% to occupational training. How can inmates become active participants in their journey despite prison’s tendency to disempower and dissocialise? One of our recommendations is to give the power to take action to inmates and ensure that they do not experience two shocks, one upon entering prison and one upon leaving it.

The last major idea is the title of our notice: how can we make reintegration everyone’s business? Currently, it falls to the prison administration, in collaboration with associations. The other public services, as well as public and private employers, are wary of individuals being released from prison, or they are overloaded with work. Society’s view of these individuals must be changed in order to promote their reintegration.

AD. If only one could be retained, it should be that reintegration is not a primary goal of the prison administration or of society. We often consider entering prison and protecting society, but never the release. 63% of individuals who experience a “sortie sèche” (ed. literally “dry release,” a release without prior preparation) re-offend in the five years that follow. This clearly shows that prison as a tool is defective, as reintegration has been unambiguously recorded as a project of the prison administration since 2009. It’s a failure.

This project is further hampered by overpopulation, which is a massive phenomenon, especially in remand centres. When several individuals share the same cell, working on oneself can be difficult. The situation is also untenable for prison staff.

When the head of an establishment must make choices, owing to a decrease in staff or guard absences, security never suffers: reintegration does.

Yet, if we want to combat recidivism and avoid its subsequent social and economic costs, the project of reintegration must be supported. Not doing so results in enormous overall costs, from requests for emergency accommodation to the Job Centre and social assistance measures. All of this is a waste. On one hand, we lock people up, we deprive them of their freedom to come and go and of other fundamental rights. On the other hand, prison could be an opportunity to break the cycle of criminal behaviour, but this project is not supported. We do not prepare tools to enable reintegration, even though it works in other countries. We do not take advantage of imprisonment to make it a useful period. This is a community failure.

<< Antoine Dulin¶

AD. It’s a good question. No, I don’t think so, otherwise I would not have done the report. Actually, it’s surprising and interesting to think that the Prime Minister referred to us on this topic. He wasn’t required to take this risk. The Minister of Justice could have spent less time in attendance, but she was there all the time and just announced a reintegration guidebook.
I think that those who are familiar with the prison world cannot be satisfied by the state of our prisons, their inefficacy and the inadequate reintegration measures. Political leaders, regardless of party, are all in agreement. For that matter, 13 years after a first notice on reintegration, the civil society members who make up the ESEC all shared the analyses and recommendations of the notice.

This debate, which does not take place in society, did take place at the ESEC. How can we change citizens’ view of the prison world?

It is widely accepted that prison protects, though only for a time. It actually increases the likelihood of recidivism and does not achieve its objectives. We should be able to have public debates in our society about this, to speak publicly of the realities of prison instead of hearing clichés such as “prison is like Club Med” or “they have television.” For example, we do not ask questions about cost. Per day and per inmate, prison costs 100 euros on average; some prisons cost 80 euros, others 200. Yet more convincing and less costly alternatives exist. Might we consent to giving people the chance to be orientated towards alternatives? Is society ready to see an increase in happy individuals, to see that these measures are more effective and cost less? We asked the Court of Auditors to calculate the socio-economic cost of recidivism, not just that of detention.

I don’t know if things change, but after five months of working with individuals who were wholly ignorant of prison issues, I sincerely believe that people’s views can change through in-depth work, awareness, and opening of prisons. People do not say what they experience in prison. There is a citizen convention on environmental questions which proposes suggestions to combat global warming. We might conceive of gathering 150 citizens, selected at random, to work on the prison issue. The results could be broadcast, open and transparent, and this might spark an amicable debate, which is not the case when politicians discuss headlines in the media. If people insist on halting change, we cannot have progress!