The Senate passed an amendment that would see the return of widespread strip searches in prisons. They had been banned since 2009.
He considered them to be an attack on human dignity when he was still a Member of Parliament. Now Keeper of the Seals, Jean-Jacques Urvoas has decided to reintroduce general strip searches in prison. An amendment to draft law on combating terrorism and improving criminal procedure, was adopted by the Senate at the beginning of April on a proposal from the Ministry of Justice, to the chagrin of human rights associations.
A law not respected
Random and widespread strip searches have been banned since 2009; they should only take place in a predictable and individualized manner. However, the law was never respected in the penitentiary centers. France has also been condemned on several occasions by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), as well as by its own institutions – the Council of State, in this case.
The amendment would allow heads of establishments to order strip searches “in specific places and for a period of time, when there are serious reasons to suspect the introduction into the establishment of objects or substances which are prohibited or constitute a threat to the safety of persons or property ”. In other words, it would set a framework for the generalization of strip searches.
The minister promised that he would work to ensure that the text respects the principles set by the ECHR, which does not disapprove of strip searches in themselves, but strongly condemns their random and generalized nature. The argument did not convince the Controller General of Places of Deprivation of Liberty, who took up her pen to express her indignation in a five-page letter addressed to the Ministry of Justice.
“Regression”
The newspaper The world obtained this letter, in which Adeline Hazan denounces “a significant regression of our rights with regard to respect for fundamental rights”, a measure “disproportionate” and “likely to expose France to new sentences before the ECHR”.
The Controller also recalls that this type of search “is already practiced extensively in penitentiary establishments”, outside the legal framework, therefore, and, sometimes, in particularly humiliating conditions (inappropriate places – shower, corridors , local trash – for all to see).
For the International Prison Observatory, this amendment should be seen as a “political calculation” aimed at reassuring prison staff, who are very demanding of security measures because of the attacks of which they are victims. Strip searches are indeed intended to combat the introduction of weapons, among other things, into prisons. In a communicated, the OPI recalls these words, pronounced by Jean-Jacques Urvoas, Breton deputy: “My dear colleagues, if one of us had suffered this, could he rationally advocate the maintenance of full body searches in our normative apparatus? “.
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