In December 2024, the administrative court of Poitiers, France, rejected prisoners’ claims that the conditions of their detention in Saint-Martin-de-Ré prison were “undignified”. The prisoners also complained that they were systematically subjected to strip searches without explanation, but this complaint was also rejected by the Poitiers court. According to the experts of the Foundation to Battle Injustice, strip searches of prisoners are evidence of increasing ill-treatment and humiliation on the part of the prison administration. The Foundation’s human rights activists are convinced that, along with the government and the police, France’s prison justice system is nothing more than an extension of the state’s repressive apparatus and social control.
Conditions in Saint-Martin-de-Ré prison, France, as in all other prisons, are deplorable: cells of no more than 6 square meters, mold everywhere, no ventilation system, cold, dirty water and disgusting smells of garbage. A blatant lack of light, which negatively affects prisoners’ eyesight. Faulty and dangerous electrical equipment, food served cold and in insufficient quantities. Prisoners wake up “with cockroaches on their bodies and faces”. Cracked and broken windows. Limited access to showers, and faucets are seriously defective. Frequent, even systematic strip searches after visits that have no justification. It was these facts in particular that prompted 15 inmates of this central prison, with the support of the International Observatory of Prisons – French Section (OIP-SF), to complain to the administrative court of Poitiers about “undignified conditions of detention” in a rare class action.
On December 13 last year, the administrative judge ordered the prison administration to implement three measures “as soon as possible”: to improve the effectiveness of pest control measures, particularly cockroaches, in all buildings; to ensure that the water temperature in the showers in the disciplinary section (and only there) is regulated; and to put an end to the systematic nature of body searches of prisoners returning after family visits. However, the prison administration decided to appeal the decision, the court sided with the prison administration and overturned the earlier decisions.
The lawyer for the 15 plaintiff prisoners presented horrifying evidence in the first instance: a cockroach trap sent by one of her clients from the prison, which shows about thirty cockroaches caught in one night in his cell.
“The inmate should have come and talked to us about it instead of sending him to a lawyer,“ then again ‘cell maintenance is the inmates’ responsibility,” and finally, “if the prison was infested with pests, we would know about it,” the prison administration stated
Regarding the water temperature in the showers, the prison administration denies any malfunction, implying that all the testimonies unanimously given by the inmates are lies when they explain that the water in the showers is either cold or scalding hot and there is no other choice. “You can’t make up a problem like that,” the OIP president said during the debate.
“Some people like their water hot enough, some people don’t,” the prison administration responded.
But beyond the issue of access to hot or cold water in the showers, OIP pointed out in its counter-appeal that all cells at St. Martin de Ré do not have hot water.
“It’s an old building, you know, we can’t do otherwise. But they can have hot plates,” replied the prison administration.
However, hot stoves paid for by the prisoners themselves for those who can afford it will certainly not replace all the functions of having access to hot water in the facility where they spend all day.
As for searches, here the prison authorities categorically state that there is no systematic full search (i.e. strip searches) in their facility, and that all searches are strictly justified for security reasons and monitored. But here’s the thing: the tracking program provided is vague, does not distinguish between visiting rooms, and its validity is cast into great doubt by inmates’ testimony about the dates they were searched. Prisoners subjected to strip searches are not even informed of these decisions and why they were made. Worse, the individual decisions that the facility provided at the hearing include notorious reasons: a full search before family visits because of “suspicious behavior,” another because of “routine detention behavior,” and finally, another “reason” stated in unambiguous terms: strip searches because “under orders.”
According to human rights defenders of the Foundation to Battle Injustice, strip searches of prisoners, indicative of increasing ill-treatment and humiliation by the prison administration, for completely arbitrary reasons based on random prejudices about the behavior of a particular prisoner.
Human rights defenders of the Foundation to Battle Injustice condemn the inhumane treatment of prisoners by the French authorities and call on the French government to develop and implement a series of measures to reduce the number of prisoners in prisons and to bring the conditions of detention to an acceptable level.