The French government on Tuesday announced measures to tackle the shocking rate of suicides in prisons, including giving vulnerable prisoners tearable bedding and single-use paper pajamas to stop them hanging themselves in their cells.
France’s overcrowded and often fetid jails have been damned by campaign groups. French President Nicolas Sarkozy acknowledged this year that prisons were the nation’s “shame.”
Reports by the UN Human Rights Committee and the Council of Europe have accused French jails of being dirty, degrading and inhumane. Overcrowding is rife and there are more than 62,000 inmates crammed into a prison system designed to house 51,000. The government yesterday said 81 prisoners had killed themselves in jail this year. But non-government organizations say the figure is higher. Suicides in prison have largely been men, with around one in five aged under 25, but also including teenagers. More than half are on remand, often it is their first time in prison.
Suicide rates in French prisons far exceed figures in countries such as Germany and the UK and figures for this year could be the worst in a decade. Prison wardens have staged protests over prison conditions and the suicide problem, with wardens’ unions warning the prison environment is so bad that there have also been suicides among prison officers.
French Justice Minister Michele Alliot-Marie announced on Tuesday special “protection kits” for vulnerable inmates, including tearable sheets and blankets as well as flame-proof mattresses. Touring a prison in Orleans to launch the measures, she said there would also be more training and better prisoner support. She also said the government would be more “transparent” about the scale of the problem. It has previously been accused of sweeping it under the carpet.
The night before Alliot-Marie’s announcement, a 37-year-old inmate in Marseille who had been under observation over family problems was found hanged in his cell.
The justice minister’s new suicide prevention measures take into account a series of recommendations by the psychiatrist Louis Albrand earlier this year. Albrand had boycotted the handing over of his report, accusing the government of failing to take the issue seriously and burying the problem. On Tuesday he called for “a real revolution in French prisons,” saying the institutions must be “humanized.”
Asian perspectives of the US have shifted from a country once perceived as a force of “moral legitimacy” to something akin to “a landlord seeking rent,” Singaporean Minister for Defence Ng Eng Hen (黃永宏) said on the sidelines of an international security meeting. Ng said in a round-table discussion at the Munich Security Conference in Germany that assumptions undertaken in the years after the end of World War II have fundamentally changed. One example is that from the time of former US president John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address more than 60 years ago, the image of the US was of a country
‘UNUSUAL EVENT’: The Australian defense minister said that the Chinese navy task group was entitled to be where it was, but Australia would be watching it closely The Australian and New Zealand militaries were monitoring three Chinese warships moving unusually far south along Australia’s east coast on an unknown mission, officials said yesterday. The Australian government a week ago said that the warships had traveled through Southeast Asia and the Coral Sea, and were approaching northeast Australia. Australian Minister for Defence Richard Marles yesterday said that the Chinese ships — the Hengyang naval frigate, the Zunyi cruiser and the Weishanhu replenishment vessel — were “off the east coast of Australia.” Defense officials did not respond to a request for comment on a Financial Times report that the task group from
BLIND COST CUTTING: A DOGE push to lay off 2,000 energy department workers resulted in hundreds of staff at a nuclear security agency being fired — then ‘unfired’ US President Donald Trump’s administration has halted the firings of hundreds of federal employees who were tasked with working on the nation’s nuclear weapons programs, in an about-face that has left workers confused and experts cautioning that the Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE’s) blind cost cutting would put communities at risk. Three US officials who spoke to The Associated Press said up to 350 employees at the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) were abruptly laid off late on Thursday, with some losing access to e-mail before they’d learned they were fired, only to try to enter their offices on Friday morning
CONFIDENT ON DEAL: ‘Ukraine wants a seat at the table, but wouldn’t the people of Ukraine have a say? It’s been a long time since an election, the US president said US President Donald Trump on Tuesday criticized Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and added that he was more confident of a deal to end the war after US-Russia talks. Trump increased pressure on Zelenskiy to hold elections and chided him for complaining about being frozen out of talks in Saudi Arabia. The US president also suggested that he could meet Russian President Vladimir Putin before the end of the month as Washington overhauls its stance toward Russia. “I’m very disappointed, I hear that they’re upset about not having a seat,” Trump told reporters at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida when asked about the Ukrainian
RSS