DOUBLE PUNISHMENT

According to the latest figures of the Council of Europe, in 2012, 57.8 percent of the deaths
in prisons in France were suicides, a significantly higher rate than the median rate of 16.8
percent in Council of Europe member states. 160
As well as having a duty to protect the physical and mental integrity of people incarcerated
in French prisons, France has a duty to protect their right to life. The European Court of
Human Rights has interpreted the obligation to protect the right to life under the ECHR as
including a duty to take “appropriate steps to safeguard the lives of those within its
jurisdiction.” 161
The prison authorities rightly focus on preventing suicide in prisons. However, academic
research has shown that self-harm is a strong risk factor for suicide in prison. 162 Prison
authorities need to take appropriate steps when prisoners self-harm to address the factors
that led them to do so, which can be a result of their detention conditions or their lack of
access to adequate mental health care. Failure to do so may constitute a violation of their
obligations to protect the right to life of all prisoners.
In the four prisons where Human Rights Watch conducted interviews with prisoners, four
prisoners (among the 50 interviewed) had scars on their arms from self-harm. Two of them
and two other prisoners said they had attempted suicide.
In the prison of Fresnes, the director told Human Rights Watch that there was a system of
assigning a prisoner identified as being at risk of suicide a co-prisoner of “support,” with
whom they would share a cell. “If they just want to scar themselves, we don’t assign a coprisoner
for their support, because no one likes to see so much blood,” he said. “We can’t
2016). There were 1,033 suicide attempts in 2014. The prison administration noted 1,391 suicide attempts in 2013, 1,671 in
2012 and 1,932 in 2011, Observatoire National du Suicide, Suicide – Etat des lieux des connaissances et perspectives de
recherche, suicide des personnes détenues en France, November 2014, p. 169,
http://www.sante.gouv.fr/IMG/pdf/rapport_ONS_2014.pdf (accessed August 9, 2015).
160 Council of Europe, SPACE I 2013.13.1., deaths in penal institutions in 2012,
http://wp.unil.ch/space/files/2015/02/SPACE-I-2013-English.pdf (accessed August 9, 2015).
161 European Court of Human Rights, Keenan v. the United Kingdom, April 3, 2001, Application no. 27229/95, paragraph 89.
162 Hawton, Linsell and al., Self-harm in prisons in England and Wales: an epidemiological study of prevalence risk factors,
clustering, and subsequent suicide, The Lancet, volume 383, No. 9923, p1147-1154, March 2014,
http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(13)62118-2/fulltext (accessed October 24, 2015).
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