Tunisia: prisons reforms through international influence

Yasmine Bouagga. A reform is a project of transformation that may have very different objectives and reasons. Reform talks, which were very present in Tunisia since the revolution of 2011, already existed at the time of Ben Ali. It was, at the time, a way of being distinguished and open to modernity. From 2011, new contributors got involved in the prison sector which until then, was very restricted and unknown. They introduced programmes for improving prison conditions, improve efficiency in prison administration and reinforce prison security.

Some grey areas were brought to light such as the excessive recourse to provisional detention, inefficiency criminal justice system and delay in judicial procedures. To enable prison reform, sentences must in some way be handled more ‘democratically’.

Another important aspect is that of security. The riots that led to the fall of Ben Ali were followed by mutinies in prisons. Due to poor infrastructure, ten thousand inmates escaped, the equivalent of a third of the prison population. Prisoners set fires on the facilities to ease their escapes, warders were compelled to shoot at prisoners in some cases.

The prisoners accounted for a significant part of the deaths during the revolution. A kind of prison trauma developed after this revolutionary moment.

Later, the prison administration requested to rebuild and improve the infrastructures. The question of security became particularly prominent in the course of the fight against terrorism, from 2013 to 2014.

YB. The revolution brought about more concern for the respect for human rights and exposed the reality of the prison world. But with the security problems mentioned above, the voices seeking for reform were not echoing in unity.

For the international organisations and donors – the United States, the European Union and its constituent countries, institutions such as the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the International Monetary Fund (IMF), The World Bank, etc. – Tunisia was seen as a model of democracy worthy of support in the Arab world. Tunisia received a lot of funding for strengthening the rule of law, human rights and for upgrading to international standards. Part of the initiative relating to justice included the prison administration, the modernisation of the prison system, the improvement of appeal systems available to prisoners and their detention conditions.

It should be noted that development aid in this sector is quite recent. Funding came consistently from the European Union because it sought to have a strengthened partnership with the Maghreb.

An important factor for the European cooperation in the Mediterranean region was supporting the stability of its neighbours, which is important for both security and migration control. Everything that strengthens the stability of state institutions follows this logic.

There is also a symbolic factor about the influence that state powers can exercise in different regions of the world. France was primarily concerned in the case of Tunisia, as it sought, through its intervention and in accordance with the EU, to maintain a privileged relationship with a Francophone country and former protectorate with which it has close ties, and to counter other growing influences like the USA.

YB. The most important initiative in the prison and justice sector is the Support Programme for Justice Reform (PARJ), funded by the European Union. PARJ provides budget support for Tunisia to help improve the judicial system, experts and establishment of institutional cooperation aiming to improve prison conditions, the efficiency of the prison administration and its security facilities. It pays particular attention to the establishment of alternatives to incarceration. The EU is not the only one intervening: The United States, with the help of the government agency ‘INL’ (Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs) is also rolling out programmes, of which the details and amounts have not been made public.

Tunisia’s prison administration ask for funds from multiple donors and accepts the intervention of international cooperation agencies, NGOs and contributors of civil society. The perception of international intervention has evolved: it is now seen as positive support, particularly when channelled to vulnerable groups (women, minors, sick detainees) and not on sensitive groups, such as detainees who are said to be dangerous. For example, Penal Reform International put in place a programme to reorganise nursery schools in women’s prisons. These actions are more likely to be open to civil society and to external scrutiny.

The multiplicity of interventions has nevertheless led to a certain cacophony.

For example, Europe and the United States intervened with respect to probation, but with substantially different approaches: while the European Union put the emphasis on alternative penalties, the latter have insisted on classifying prisoners according to their level of dangerousness. While the European Union is concerned about reintegration and organise prison excursions for the integration and probation departments in order to practise prisoners’ management outside the prison, the USA, on the other hand, are developing more secure approaches with respect to the detection of risks, or the establishment of response protocols in the event of a riot.

These differing approaches are not only due to varying conceptions among foreign experts: they also exist within the ‘beneficiary’ administration itself.

Even the Tunisian General Directorate for Prisons and Rehabilitation actively seeks for security trainings, especially because of concerns about the risk of terrorism, while approaches regarding to reintegration or non-custodial sentences still seem somewhat abstract.

Probation offices have been set up, but they do not yet have a significant criminal population to work on, because the legislative reforms are yet to be adopted. Non-custodial sentences have not yet materialised in a way that provides alternatives to prison. The scale of penalties and the severity of sanctions remain a taboo where, apart from a few small steps concerning the consumption of narcotic drugs, no ‘revolution’ has taken place to shake Tunisian prisons.

• Bouagga, Yasmine. ‘Pas de révolution dans les prisons : réformes et inerties dans le système répressif de l’après-Ben Ali.’ In Tunisie. Une démocratisation au-dessus de tout soupçon ? edited by Amin Allal and Vincent Geisser, 20528. Paris : CNRS Editions, 2018.

• Bouagga, Yasmine. ‘Prison Escape and Its Political Imaginary in Times of Political Crisis: Tunisia, 2011–2016’. In Prison Breaks. Toward a Sociology of escape, edited by Tomas Max Martin and Gilles Chantraine, 14368. Palgrave Studies in Prisons and Penology. Palgrave Macmillan, 2018.

• Bouagga, Yasmine. “Passeurs de murs. Pour une socio-anthropologie des réformateurs des prisons africaines”. Politique africaine, no 3 (2019): 105–130.