Drug trafficking law: prison regime validated by the Constitutional Council, but important articles censored

The government is safe: of the 38 articles of the law "aimed at freeing France from the drug trafficking trap" that were referred to the Constitutional Council, only six were censored, in whole or in part. And the biggest chunk came out unscathed: the supreme judges declared Article 61 of the law, which creates anti-organized crime units in penitentiary establishments, to be constitutional. This is a relief for Minister of Justice Gérald Darmanin, who had made these ultra-secure prisons, intended to house the most dangerous drug traffickers in the future, the keystone of his policy.

Many lawyers and prisoners' rights associations had hoped that the institution on Rue de Montpensier would, in the name of human dignity, censor this new prison regime, modeled on that of Italy and considered one of the strictest in Europe. But the Council thus considered that "the conditions to which the decision of the Minister of Justice to assign a detainee to an organized crime unit is subject" do not disregard the "principle of safeguarding human dignity."

However, the members of the Constitutional Council expressed a reservation regarding the case of complete and systematic searches of prisoners. While the Council validated their principle, based in particular on a decision of the European Court of Human Rights, it was keen to stress that such searches should only be carried out when surveillance by a prison officer "has been prevented by special circumstances relating to the privacy of the detained person, the need to preserve the confidentiality of their communications or exceptional difficulties in organizing the prison service."

Among the six censored articles, three are particularly important and sensitive. The decision on Article 56, which established the principle of exclusive use of videoconferencing for persons placed in high-security units for their appearance before a judge, was particularly anticipated, particularly since the controversy generated by the recent extraction, on June 11, of drug trafficker Mohamed Amra from the Condé-sur-Sarthe prison (Orne), where he is incarcerated, to the Paris judicial court.

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