The director of French prisons, in a document published on Thursday, lamented that several detention centers for immigrants in an irregular situation, despite repeated warnings, structurally remain “attacks on human dignity” but “remain without action”.
“There is an urgent need to fundamentally change the current approach to the care of foreign nationals held in CRAs,” the administrative detention centers where they are held pending eviction, writes Dominique Simonnot in new recommendations published on March 19. May sent to the government were published on Thursday in the Official Gazette.
This time, the letter from the independent managing authority is aimed at four rating agencies: Lyon 2 (south-east), Mesnil-Amelot in the Paris region, Metz (east) and Sète (south), where conditions have been found “seriously prejudicial to the dignity and the Fundamental rights of the detainees”.
She referred in particular to the example of the CRA in Lyon, which opened in January 2022 and “is intended to serve as a model for a ‘CRA of the future'”: “However, the arrangement and organization of the places leads to serious attacks on privacy, dignity and human safety”.
The independent authority also lamented the deteriorating prison conditions, “due both to the aging of the poorly maintained, overcrowded premises and to their design for short stays”.
In 2022, France had 25 of these centers with a total of 1,936 places available. The government hopes to reach 3,000 places by 2027 by building new CRAs. A total of 15,922 people in an irregular situation were arrested in mainland France last year, including 27,643 abroad.