Update to recent post, "Persistent And Recurring Difficulties" (February 13, 2006):

REPORT CRITICISING PRISONS OUT OF DATE, SAYS MINISTER

PARIS February 16, 2006 (Guardian) - [The COE Report By Alvaro Gil-Robles, Commissioner For Human Rights, On The Effective Respect For Human Rights In France] said France's jails were overcrowded and underfunded, its police cells "disastrous and at odds with the requirements of modern society", and criticised the police for operating with a "sense of impunity".

But yesterday, the justice minister, Pascal Clément, said the French government had "taken the measures that needed to be taken" to combat prison overcrowding.

This has to be something of a record for responsive French reform. Mr. Gil-Robles conducted his prison inspections in September of last year. The report proper runs to 97 pages of exposition (not counting the cover sheet, TOC, and annexed response of the French authorities) and details problems and abuses years in the making. The report concludes with 71 specific remedial recommendations (XI.374, pp. 96-102).

In April of last year Amnesty International released its own report, France The Search For Justice: The Effective Impunity Of Law Enforcement Officers In Cases Of Shootings, Deaths In Custody Or Torture And Ill-Treatment. In addition to its own findings, the AI report cites several earlier reports blown off by the French government, for example (§2.3):

International treaty bodies have also expressed concern about the procedures of investigation of human rights violations by law enforcement officers. The concerns expressed or recommendations made to France on this issue by the Human Rights Committee in 1997 or the CAT [UN Committee against Torture] in 1998 (the last time France appeared before either of these bodies) are still current.

The AI report, which ran to some 32,700 words, made 41 specific recommendations (§7.a-j).

Yet mere months after the AI report and only days after the COE report are published, the French government suddenly gets busy and -- Voilà ! -- "persistent and recurring" abuses are all smoothed out. Why if it were anyone other than M. Clément, le garde des Sceaux, the French high priest of the sanctity of the human person, why, such a claim...such a claim would defy credulity.

PFFT (What is this?): Lazy soundbite 5 | Circulez, il n'y a rien à voir 5 | Rayonnement français 0

Mind you, I wouldn't like to be an inmate in any US jails either.

I have no doubts, ugly things are going on in French prisons, and any human rights organisations pointing out to violations in French detention centres have to be acknowledged and investigated by the government.

However, I don't think the United-States is currently in a confortable position to critisize any other countries human rights record flaws, when it believes there is nothing wrong with the way Guantanamo prison is being run.

Guantanamo? The only people who criticize it are muslims and their socialist pets. In reality, Guantanamo is far better than the camps the Germans and their French buddies sent their Jewish citizens to.

Have you seen the Abu Ghraib Photos, the new ones and the old ones ? The only people who criticize it are muslims and their socialist pets, of course. Plus a few billions people.

And while the USA has a higher rate of incarceration than any other country in the world (2 millions people in jail, 8 times the rate of France), you still lecture France on its prison records.

Messieurs les Américains, si vous regardiez d'abord la poutre dans votre oeil avant de donner des leçons aux autres ?

Ah, M. FFF et Mlle. Michele,

America hopes never to show you the hospitality of its penal system. But you seem very well behaved, so let us all rest easy on this worrying point.

Now we must labor the obvious: It is not America that is criticizing French prisons. It is the UN, the COE, AI, French-grown humanitarians and rights groups (e.g., MRAP). Not one of these is an American entity.

If you read our posts carefully, you will see we offer no long list of recommendations of our own. We merely report what oversight authorities have urgently called on France to reform. You appear to argue that Pave should not report and our readers should not be informed of the conditions in French prisons. Yet we do not begrudge you your keen interest in American prisons and posting your poorly informed opinions here. You, like France -- an extensively documented persistent violator of due process and a failure at penal management -- feel in a comfortable position to assess American penal management. Pave does not weep.

Speaking of Guantanamo, well, the nice thing is that if you are a detainee the whole world knows where you are and worries over your every hangnail. Not so unhappy French repatriates. Oh, yes, Gitmo detainees are forcefully fed when they choose to starve. Does France think the humane thing is to allow them to starve?

Oh, and those Korans in the toilets? A disappointed world is ever ready to believe these terrorists' fairy tales anew.

As for claims of Gitmo torture, here is one damning headline:

EX-GUANTANAMO GUARD DESCRIBES TORTURE METHODS

And here is its less than damning story:

Specialist Sean Baker, 38, the military policeman who went public last year with an account of being beaten up at Guantanamo by U.S. personnel who mistook him for a prisoner, claimed prisoners had also been alternately locked in cold and hot rooms to discomfit them.

Yes. France won't abide any discomfiture of terrorist detainees.

Ah, Mlle. Michele, here is some clarifying arithmetic: America has 5x the population of France. America incarcerates criminals in prisons, which markedly differs from the French practice of ceding criminals Zones de Non Droit -- pardon, Zones Urbaines Sensibles -- to run their own prisons at the expense of the law-abiding.

DGB

Some clarifying arithmetic ?? I know the USA has 5x the population of France, I'm not dumb, Mr Bennet.
There are 2,1 millions people in jail in your country. That's 726 inmates per 100,000 US residents.
The rate of France is 91 per 100,000, still 8 time less. Got it ?
An estimated TWELVE PERCENT of all black men in their late 20s are in jail in the USA. That's racial integration !
And if the USA incarcerate criminals in prison with so much success, why is the murder rate in the USA so much higher than in old Europe?

And what are the UN, the COE, AI, etc, saying about THAT :
http://www.antiwar.com/news/?articleid=2444
New Abu Ghraib Abuse Photos

Bonjour,

Que dire des prisonniers que l'on voit enchainés sur le bord des routes ?
Ou des malheureux malades mentaux condamnés à mort sous l'oeuil haineux des parents des victimes ?

etc,etc...

"Les Etats-Unis sont passés directement de la barbarie à la décadence sans passer par la civilisation. "

André SIEGFRIED.

Good luck for ""your"" country in Irak ,Bolivia ,Venezuela,Brazil ,Cuba etc

@ Damian Benêt

Bonjour,

Il est curieux que les fanatiques anti-communistes que vous êtes s'abritent derrière les dires d'un mouvement (le MRAP) communiste...
Et après vous ne voulez pas que nous , nous tenions pour vrai le discours de Castro sur l' Amérique et les Yankees ?
Curieux paradoxe !!

Good luck for ""your"" country in Irak !

Ah, Mlle. Michele,

Here you are, complaining that we should presume to report in a blog about France and things French what the UN, the COE, AI, French-grown humanitarians and rights groups have investigated and published about France.

But we are sports and will see if we can work through your points.

First let us look at your 2.1 million American prisoners number. Do you know how this number is constituted? It is a composite number for 2K3 YE (the latest year posted on the DOJ Web site) of all persons incarcerated in the course of that year. But at the end of the year the in-prison population was 1,470,045, the difference having been released, paroled, or died. This spoils somewhat your dramatic arithmetic.

Let us together, hand in hand, do that arithmetic.

The United States has a population of 295,734,134. 1,470,045 prisoners is ~4.97% of the general population. Now follow closely, 4.97% of 100,000 = 497. You see, this is very different number than your 726, a +146% margin of error.

The population of France is 60,656,178. The COE report gives the French in-prison population as of 11.05 as 58,082, this is .96% of the general population. Now follow closely, .96% of 100,000 = 96. Again a different number than yours, a more modest -5% margin of error.

But what of the prisoners in the ZUSs?

France has condemned a population of some 4-5 million French poor and unassimilated immigrants in ZUSs. Of course nobody really knows the number because, whereas the French discriminate against blacks, Arabs, and Muslims, they cleverly do not bother to tally them up. Our number is a conservative guess based on guesses bruited in the media.

At the lower-end of our guess (4 million, certainly within your wide margin of error) they represent 6.59% of the general population, or 659/100,000. When we add in the formal in-prison population we get a whooping 755/100,000. A less conservative base-estimate produces distressingly larger numbers. Mlle. Michele, even a stalwart patriotard such as yourself must find this alarming.

Of course, one of the advantages of American incarceration is the guarantee of due process. The ZUS inhabitants, both criminal and lawful, are neither arraigned nor tried, just sentenced.

Let us push on. "An estimated TWELVE PERCENT of all black men in their late 20s are in jail in the USA." The number is actually 10.4%, but we sense your outrage, so we understand completely your speechless paralysis about the estimated 60% of all French inmates who are minorities, predominately Muslims. As you might say, "That's racial integration!"

Oh, thank you for the link. Sadly we could find no comments by the UN, the COE, AI, French-grown humanitarians and rights groups, which you indicated would be in open abundance. What Abu Ghraib might have to do with urgently needed French penal reform, well, we haven't figured that out yet.

Not to be rude, but at this point we feel compelled to ask if you have "got it"? You assure us you are not dumb, and we take you at your word. But what accounts for your poorly researched, poorly argued points? And what accounts for your utter silence on the topic of this post: abuses and derelictions in the French penal system?

Regards,
DGB

M. AB/AY,

What is it with you and names? Is misspelling a hobby of yours?

Now let us help you out with your perplexity. Were you modestly alert you would have noticed long ago many of our cited sources come from media camps for whose views we hold little or no sympathy (e.g., the French government, AFP, the Guardian, et al.). When arguments so sourced are advanced, we preclude your frivolous complaints about unsympathetic American media.

Always happy to unconfound your taxed intellect.

Now what we find curious is here you are complaining about reports from the very institutions that France embraces and promotes.

I return you M. Siegfried's quote thusly:

"France is the only country to have passed from decadence to obliquity without the French taking notice."

Good luck with your spelling tutors

DGB

poorly researched, poorly argued points?
So the US media can't be trusted. Who will I believe, you or ABCNews ?

"The population of the nation's prisons and jails has grown by about 900 inmates each week between mid-2003 and mid-2004, according to figures released Sunday by the Bureau of Justice Statistics. By last June 30 the system held 2.1 million people, or one in every 138 U.S. residents"

According to the Justice Policy Institute, which advocates a more lenient system of punishment, the United States has a higher rate of incarceration than any other country, followed by Britain, China, France, Japan and Nigeria.

There were 726 inmates for every 100,000 U.S. residents by June 30, 2004, compared with 716 a year earlier, according to the report by the Justice Department agency. In 2004, one in every 138 U.S. residents was in prison or jail; the previous year it was one in every 140.

In 2004, 61 percent of prison and jail inmates were of racial or ethnic minorities, the government said. An estimated 12.6 percent of all black men in their late 20s were in jails or prisons, as were 3.6 percent of Hispanic men and 1.7 percent of white men in that age group, the report said."

http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=699808

And what accounts for your utter silence on the topic of this post: abuses and derelictions in the French penal system?

I know what happens in our jails, and that's not pretty. But you're in no position to teach us lessons on that topic. With what happens in Abu Graib, Guantanamo or Bagram you're not going to convince anyone that your system is better than ours.

Ah, Michele,

Like many of our French correspondents you are an excitable critic but a poor reader.

As you see I have cited my sources had you wanted to look beyond ABC News. A careful reader would have seen that I cite from ABC's primary source, the BOJ. Alas, as I remarked the latest numbers I found were from 2003. Contrary to the ABC headline U.S. prison populations did not "soar". The 2.1 million number for 2004 is smaller than that cited in the BOJ 2003 report (2,212,475). But ABC News apparently is your idea of thorough and extensive research.

I also explained the difference between yearly aggregate incarcerations and in-prison populations, something ABC News doesn't bother with, which suits you. But you prefer comparing French in-prison apples with American aggregate incarceration oranges.

Michele, who should you believe? Since you ask -- and we are flattered that such a lively adversary should ask us to settle this important issue for her -- Pave counsels you to believe your reason after a close critical reading of the sources. We do not pretend to be penologists, though you seem to think ABC to be. We could be wrong, though you seem certain that ABC could not. If you skunk us, we will admit it, though ABC would not.

Thank you for finally addressing the topic of this post. We are glad to know that you don't think things are pretty in French prisons, which is as much as we have reported here.

And lastly what lessons have we offered you and France? Again, we've merely reported here the pleadings of the UN, the COE, your own humanitarians and rights groups. Pleadings for France to be humane, to observe norms of due process, and apply her own laws equitably.

I ask again, why do you not want Pave readers to know these things?

Oh, I didn't see your response in defense of France's ZUS detainees-for-life. Things there are not very pretty either.

Regards,
DGB