Key Benefits:
1. Article 9 of the Act of 30 October 2007 allows the Comptroller General of places of deprivation of liberty, when it finds a grave violation of the fundamental rights of persons deprived of their liberty, to promptly refer the competent authorities to their observations by asking them to respond. Following the response, he finds whether he was terminated the reported violation; it may make public its observations and the replies obtained.
Pursuant to this emergency provision, implemented for the fourth time since the beginning of its mandate, the Comptroller General publishes these recommendations relating to the juvenile district of the Villeneuve-lès-Maguelone (Hérault), which was visited in a special way by two controllers from 17 to 20 February 2014, with the aim of evaluating information on the violence that takes place therein, indications that were previously brought to the attention of the general control.
2. The Minister of Justice, and the Minister of Social Affairs, issued these recommendations to the attention of the Minister of Justice. A period of sixteen days was given to them to make their observations known. At the end of this period, no response was reached to control.
Following this procedure and in accordance with Act No. 2007-1545 of 30 October 2007, the Comptroller General of Places of Deprivation of Liberty has decided to publish the following findings and recommendations.
3. Locally, the controllers had interviews with the director of the arrest house, the head of detention, the chief and the officer responsible for the building A (where the juvenile district is located), the prison staff assigned to the same district, a supervisor responsible for the walks, the head of the education unit within the territorial education service of the open environment (STEMO) of Montpellier, the teachers responsible for the judicial protection of the local community They participated in a working meeting of the juvenile district.
Following the visit, telephone interviews were conducted with the Vice-Procurator, a minor's substitute, near the Grand Instance Court of Montpellier, a juvenile judge, the director of the STEMO of Montpellier and the military officer in charge of the arrest house at the gendarmerie of Villeneuve-lès-Maguelone.
4. He was met during and after the visit of important difficulties in obtaining responsible authorities the information necessary to establish the facts.
On the first day of their visit, the controllers asked to be informed of possible disciplinary commissions to which minors would appear. Two disciplinary commissions were held during the visit. The controllers, who were not informed, or wrongly, were unable to attend any.
The Comptrollers requested the communication of documents, in particular the records of the 2013 Incarceration Commissions, the video records of the incidents in the Court of Drive on January 4 and February 11, and the full record of incidents, disciplinary procedures and incident telephone records (CRTI) that were issued between January 1 and February 17, 2014.
The record of the Incarceration Commission of 7 May 2013, in which the issue of assaults of minors was addressed, and the video recording of 4 January was provided only after a specific complaint from the controllers, having found that these documents had not been submitted. The other documents received are far from exhaustive, as evidenced by the circumstance that the controllers have reports of serious incidents without the subsequent disciplinary procedures, from CRTI without the incident reports that motivated them, or disciplinary decisions without the prior records of the staff. A request for video and reports of violence that occurred after the visit on 28 February did not result. In other words, despite reminders, controllers are far from certain that the violence identified below has been fully identified.
This is all the less because similar difficulties were encountered with the STEMO in Montpellier, which did not transmit any of the "staff notes" of the head of the educational unit in 2013 that had been asked to him, and with the prosecutor, who believed that he could invoke the secret of the instruction to abstain from communicating a note written by a judge of the children ― that had been transmitted to him ― on the violence in the juvenile quarters
5. The Comptroller General is therefore obliged to recall that, pursuant to section 8 of the Act of 30 October 2007, he obtains from the authorities responsible for the place visited any information or material useful to the exercise of his mission, unless that communication is likely to infringe on a protected secret, none of which was in question in the documents requested, since the "administrative" secret is not enforceable.
It is naturally led to question the meaning of the voluntary restrictions that were opposed to it. Everything happened as if one had wanted to minimize, on the one hand, the magnitude of the violence involved, on the other hand, the lack of effective responses from some officials. In any case, the lack of transparency required by law in cases of violence does not advocate for those who have not wished to give them the necessary clarifications.
6. As they were able to be established, that is, very likely underestimated, the findings of violence that take place in the juvenile district of the Villeneuve-lès-Maguelone arrest house are serious.
7. On 18 February 2014, the juveniles ' quarter housed twenty children, six of whom were incarcerated for the first time. During the entire year of 2013, 114 minors were detained in the neighbourhood for an average duration of sixty-three days. 13 per cent of these minors were under the age of sixteen when they were placed under the umbrella. They are all housed in an individual cell, except in case of over-occupation (so in spring and summer 2013). As a result, most of the violence identified takes place outside of the cells, during travel and in the walking court.
The children are divided into two groups of approximately equal importance (two and eight respectively on 18 February). Each of the groups has access to the walk yard separately one and a half hour in the morning, in the afternoon. Apart from a water point, the court, dedicated exclusively to minors, does not have any equipment, health or sports, or any kind. On the other hand, it is a place of exchanges and traffics, children going to search in neutral areas bordering the court for the projections of objects intended for the major incarcerated and then handed over to them (by porosity between neighborhoods), the latter being able to leave a part of the spoil to the minors.
8. From 1 January 2013 to 11 February 2014, there were 24 serious violence in the court. For the reasons indicated, the controllers believe that violence between children is much greater than those identified. Interlocutors also mentioned that not all were the subject of an incident report. A child told the controllers that he "broken the nose and dirtyly mocked" another in the court: the latter would then have explained that he had fallen "by making pumps and the supervisor was satisfied with this explanation".
The violence is perceptible in the transcripts given: July 4, 2013, the victim received many punches in the head, "she fell unconscious several minutes before being taken to the infirmary and was extracted [from the institution] for further examinations." January 4, 2014: Three children assault a fourth one and "several punches and kicks in his face on the sole ground that he recently arrived at the facility" (the victim will be taken to the CHU in Montpellier). Weapons per destination were used (e.g. razor lamps).
9. Among the attacks identified, nine (more than one-third) involve children arriving the day before or before in the facility. There is, therefore, likely to be a "transition rite" at the time of entry to prison, such as a commission held on May 7, 2013, or frequent accounts for cases outside the prison. Geographical origin also weighs: during the visit, eight miners come from Montpellier, five from Nîmes, three from Marseille, two from Sète, one from Toulouse. But, regardless of the motives, the controllers indirectly collected testimony about some of them, released or transferred, indicating "traumatic children". No complaint is filed (with the exception of that, exceptional, of a mother in February 2014).
10. On the date of the visit, no effective parade has been implemented and, therefore, they continue. Prison staff appears to be physically unpunished. The supervision of the court is not without fault as long as dead angles exist (vision and fixed camera) which disappear only if a mobile camera is used and on the additional condition that the sun (in the morning) does not obscure the vision; the testimonies collected indicate that many incidents are missing from the supervisor in charge of monitoring the court remotely. The procedures for the intervention of the supervisors, whose physical integrity must obviously be preserved, in the event of an incident in the court, are heavy and slow. Most importantly, disciplinary procedures are also slow. The deadlines for convening before the Disciplinary Commission may reach several months; In view of the average length of detention of children, many are never punished because of the physical violence they have carried out: thus, the six aggressors prosecuted for violence committed on 18 April 2013 were referred to the Disciplinary Commission on 27 June 2013; at that time, at least four were already released. In addition, the "good-order measures" defined in the regulations (Note of March 19, 2012) for low-gravity errors are never used, except by the local education officer. Under these conditions, "agents don't believe in anything" says a manager. At the very least, their conviction regarding the effectiveness of measures against violence appears to be singularly roused.
11. In accordance with the existing legislation, there is a multidisciplinary care of children incarcerated. However, at the meeting at which the controllers attended, the procedure did not allow for an examination of the individual situation of each minor. Unlike the circular of May 24, 2013, no records are kept in the neighbourhood; In other words, the transmission of information seems uninsured. For their part, caregivers of the health unit, who have to know the effects of violence, do not wish to be linked to possible legal proceedings. The responsible physician refuses to produce the certificates issued to any person other than to the interested, deemed to be "sufficiently mature" to assess the follow-up to be given, even if he takes care to clarify that these certificates are available to any expert appointed by the judicial authority. The Public Prosecutor ' s Office has indicated that it has initiated a judicial investigation into each act of violence committed by juvenile detainees. But on the one hand, it was not possible to determine what part of these facts had been brought to his knowledge (e.g., the CASSIOPÉE judicial software does not allow to identify the files according to the place of commission of the offences), thus returning all the violence and their follow-ups; on the other hand, these investigations, in the vast majority of situations, collide with the silence of the victims and their parents.
12. The only change factor identified is the initiative of the territorial youth protection authority to bring together an interdisciplinary commission from October 2013 on the theme of a "violence action plan", whose focus is primarily on training days.
13. The persistence of violent practices in the area of miners visited poses a serious threat to the physical integrity of minors in the facility. This serious and urgent situation leads the Controller-General to make the comments below.
14. It must be recalled in the first place that, under Article 37 of the International Convention on the Rights of the Child, the signatory States shall ensure that "any child deprived of liberty shall be treated with humanity and with respect due to the dignity of the human person, and in a manner that takes into account the needs of persons of his age". In addition, as the Constitutional Council recalled, "the need to seek the educational and moral rehabilitation of delinquent children by measures adapted to their age and personality... [was] constantly recognized by the laws of the Republic (...) [that, however], the original provisions of the order of 2 February 1945 did not deviate the criminal responsibility of minors and did not exclude, in the event of necessity, that such measures were imposed on them, That is the scope of the fundamental principle recognized by the laws of the Republic in the field of juvenile justice" (Cons. constit. No. 2002-461 DC of 29 August 2002, considered. 26). If the detention is thus admitted, it must not eliminate any search for "educational rehabilitation".
15. However, there is a sort of resignation to the forms of aggression found, based on the fact that these children are clearly brought to violence and that nothing useful can be opposed to what appears to be of their nature. This feeling cannot be allowed. If it is true that minors, of course more numerous among those imprisoned, are willing to resort to violence, this circumstance cannot be admitted as an irremediable fact. The open educational system and the penitentiary system must adapt their care to the persons entrusted to them. It is neither motivating nor useful to regret a time, whose reality is very doubtful, where the miners would have been different. Thinking has been undertaken. They must be amplified and translated into each juvenile district, for which regular audits should be conducted.
16. As soon as its first public recommendations concerning a penitentiary institution (recommendations relating to the arrest house of Villefranche-sur-Saône, Official Journal of 6 January 2009, § 4), the Comptroller General of Places of Deprivation of Liberty pointed out that the courses of prison walks " paradoxically constitute a space without rules in institutions subject to multiple and incessant standards. They are, in a way, abandoned to detainees, who willingly consider the court as an exutory to confinement in cells and as a market, substitute for deprivation. In the event of a rix or assault, it is necessary to wait for inmates to reintegrate the building to regain control of the situation. The consequences are threefold: the strongest imposes its law; serious injuries are frequently observed; Many prisoners refuse to go on a walk, fear of attacks. And the perpetrators of offences are far from always punished." He argued that "the reconquest of walking courses, which can only be conceived as a long-term process, must be recommended as an objective of the prison administration. Progressively, in some hypotheses, in some establishments, until applicable in all circumstances and in all places, the supervisors, in sufficient numbers, like any other actor, must coexist in all spaces with the inmates. The court must return to what it is made for: a place of walk, i.e. relaxation, sociability or the possibility of staying alone". Five years later, no effort was made to that end. The presence of prison staff, provided that they are known and appreciated, in the courses, could precisely be initiated in the course of juvenile neighbourhoods, in order to prevent the recovery of "projections", traffic and violence. It must, of course, be accompanied by necessary security measures, including much more prompt intervention procedures.
17. At the same time, the educational care of children, expressed by the presence of educators of the juvenile justice protection management in prison, must include education in the settlement of disputes, mutual respect, denunciation of mythologies (subsumed differences based on distinct geographical origins). At the same time, inmate educators must receive from their professional environment the support and tools that these learnings require. Painful children must be identified and taken care of appropriately.
18. The prison must, more so in the particular case of children, establish, even for short-term stays, trust links with families. The absence of complaints in cases of violence translates resignation or fear, or both: the dialogue established at regular intervals must facilitate the necessary reconciliations and approaches. Corollaryly, the perpetrators of attacks must be identified and their relatives placed before their responsibilities.
19. Directorates and prosecutors (and, together with them, police or gendarmerie forces) must prosecute these perpetrators on disciplinary and, if necessary, criminal matters. To this end, procedures must be reconciled, in accordance with the rights of the defence, with shorter periods of imprisonment. It was also often pointed out that rapid delays were infinitely more educational than procedures leading to a long time after the commission of the facts: this assertion is also in prison, both for the authors and for the staff. It is not acceptable for violent people to develop in the prison a feeling of impunity comparable to that which they may experience outside. Naturally, it will be ensured that the materiality of the facts is established: minors ' quarters must be used accordingly.
20. Finally, the question of reporting to the judicial authority by the doctors who were required to assess the bodily consequences of the attacks is raised. Reconciliation of the two provisions of the Code of Medical Ethics applicable articles R. 4127-10 and R. 4127-44 the Public Health Code) should authorize this reporting. In fact, when he discovers that the person he examines has been subjected to abuse or ill-treatment, the doctor may only apply to the judicial authority with the consent of the person concerned; but this agreement is not required in the case of a minor or a person unable to do so (and in this case the administrative authority may also be seized). The application of these provisions implies that they are recognized as "abuse", in the sense that the term is here used, the consequences of the blows received in the yard of a walk. It also assumes that the physician does not invoke "special circumstances" which section R. 4127-44 recognizes to him the right to invoke them "in conscience" to refrain from notifying the authorities. However, the scope of the regulations cannot be questioned: children are particularly protected from violence by others. In addition, if special circumstances may be invoked in the case of detained minors, it may only be that of being isolated, because cut off from their families, and that of being paralyzed by fear of reprisal in the event of a complaint. These circumstances require the doctor to be even more careful than outside and, therefore, a widely designed report. The protection that the medical secret, obviously essential, is worth to the patient, does not have to turn against him. That's what would happen if no reporting was done. This is not how the code of ethics can be designed. It is up to the health authorities to remind the prison authorities of their scope.
J.-M. Delarue
