ThoseJustice in French -speaking Switzerland
Prison: why Geneva and Vaud have heavy hand
According to research funded by the Swiss National Fund, the particularly punitive culture of these two cantons explains their chronic prison overcrowding.
A cell in the Geneva prison in Champ-Dollon, photographed during a report in May 2010.
Laurent Guiraud/TDG
- A search points to prison overcrowding which mainly affects Geneva and Vaud.
- According to the study, the cause is neither the lack of detention places, nor a particular crime to these cantons, but a more punitive culture of their authorities.
- These data, according to the French laboratory on prison decreases, argue to strengthen alternatives to incarceration.
Why are Geneva and Vaud distinguished by chronic and prolonged prison overcrowding? Because of a more marked punitive culture than elsewhere.
It is the Roman laboratory on prison decreases which establishes this diagnosis. This participatory body is sponsored by Ruth Dreifuss and includes in particular the Geneva prosecutor Pierre Bayenet or Manon Jendly, criminologist at the University of Lausanne.
It was set up at the University of Geneva as part of research on alternative solutions to prison*, funded by the Swiss National Fund and led by Julie de Dardel, professor of cultural and political geography at the University of Geneva. She popularizes the issues in an analysis note published this Wednesday.
The study contradicts the explanations delivered in general by the Geneva criminal authorities and Vaudoises: overcrowding is not explained either by a lack of detention places, or by particular crime, and not more by the constraints of criminal law.
“There is no shortage of places”
Researchers note first that prison overcrowding affects essentially Latin cantons in Switzerland, with an occupancy rate of 101% against 86% in German -speaking Switzerland. And it is Geneva (109%) and Vaud (115%) who pull the average up.
These cantons have more detention places than elsewhere. In Switzerland, the average is 81 per 100,000 inhabitants. However, with 786 places, Vaud has a rate of 95/100,000. With 726 places, it is 141/100,000 in Geneva. The two cantons thus bring together 21% of the places in Switzerland, while they have 15% of the national population.
They created many places between 2008 and 2015 (GE: +350; VD: +250) and are still considering: 250 with the reconstruction of Champ-Dollon and the extension of the Brenaz in Geneva, 410 in Vaud Terres with the planning of the Grandes Marais and 80 at the Plaine de l’Orbe.
Penitentiary establishments in the Orbe plain on February 1, 2024
©Florian Cella/24h
Building more prisons leads to locking up ever more people, warns Julie de Dardel: “The extension of the penitentiary park has been accompanied, since the early 2000s, by significant growth in the detention rate in these two cantons,” she adds.
Thus, the rate in Switzerland, deemed moderate, is 74 per 100,000 inhabitants – 63 in German -speaking Switzerland. At the head of the podium, we find Geneva (154), which broke the records in Western Europe, and Vaud (109), which is close to the most incarcerating countries in Europe (Great Britain and France). Conclusion of researchers: Geneva and Vaudois prisons overflow because we put a lot of people there, not for lack of places.
Crime tourism?
This phenomenon is not justified by crime which would be higher under the effect of criminal tourism from Lyon, sweeps the study. She compared with other border and/or urban cantons such as Ticino, Basel and Zurich.
Basel, close to large French cities, knows the largest frequency of offenses and incarcerates 2.3 times less than Geneva. Vaudish crime is only slightly above the national average for most offenses, with figures close to Zurich whose detention rate is much lower.
Above all, the significant increase in the number of detainees in the two Lake Geneva cantons has taken place in the period of generalized crime in Switzerland for fifteen years.
Julie de Dardel.
DR
Different criminal crops
The researchers then note that if the cantons all apply the same penal code, their own criminal policy guides the way in which police activity and that of prosecutors, who pronounce in Switzerland 92% of convictions, those liable to less than six months in prison.
“Vaud and especially Geneva are more severe concerning the nature and duration of sanctions,” says Julie de Dardel. Geneva pronounces 10% of all convictions in Switzerland while it concentrates 6% of the population. And the private sentences of without suspended freedom in Geneva correspond to 16% of all those pronounced in Switzerland.
The soaring of the detention rate in 2012 could find its origin by the orientations of the criminal policy then decided jointly by the new State Councilor responsible for security Pierre Maudet and the new Attorney General Olivier Jornot: “This is one of our explanatory hypotheses”, says Julie de Dardel.
Des solutions alternatives
The laboratory message is therefore that the entries in prisons must be reduced. “Building more will not resolve prison overcrowding, while risking increasing its consequences that are the governance crisis of the Geneva system et the deleterious conditions of detention and work which complained and guardians complain about.»
According to the project director, beyond other solutions such as the electronic bracelet and the works of general interest, a less punitive global approach must be adopted by opening this public debate. In addition, the urgency would be to finish in Switzerland with the conversion of fines in prison days, which concerns crimes of little importance.
In 2023, these conversions concerned 42% of the sanctions carried out, or some 32,000 days of imprisonment of a median duration of eight days. At 350 francs on prison day – much more if we include spending to succeed – the measure is very expensive without being effective in preventing crimes, observes Julie de Dardel. Regarding Geneva, the Federal Court has also denounced the disproportion of enclosing beggars.
No bus ticket: finished the fine?
In response to an arrest of Jessica Jaccoud (PS/VD) concerning a criminalization of povertythe Federal Council deems appropriate to reflect on a reduction in prison sentences in substitutions in the event of unpaid fines.
For example, by decriminalizing certain behaviors as long as they remain sanctioned differently. Thus, the Federal Council says it is ready to examine the abolition of the ticket for lack of title valid in public transport. Indeed, a supplement can already be required by carriers who increases in the event of recurrence. Advantage: without criminal penalty, justice and the police are discharged.
Another track: below 5,000 francs fine, a conversion to confinement could be prohibited and the amount covered only by means of prosecution.
Social measures, prevention, etc.
How to guarantee security? The prison decrease should, according to Julie de Dardel, first concern the short sorrows, therefore not very serious crimes. Above all, studies show that the deterrent effect of the prison is very limited, she adds.
Alternative solutions may include social, therapeutic, educational, even cultural, measures, like the success of the four pillars’ policy – prevention, therapy, risk reduction and repression – to combat drugs.
Another example: in fifty years, the number of killed roads has been divided by ten despite the explosion of traffic thanks to a whole series of measures completing criminal sanctions – belt, helmet, airbags, prevention, radars …
Fewer provisional detentions
The other priority, according to Julie de Dardel, is to return to a measured practice of detention before judgment, which concerns 46% of prisoners in Switzerland, a European record. “This is explained in particular by an overestimation of the risk of leakage of foreigners, even when they are suspected of minor offenses.”
However in Geneva, more than 80% of provisional detainees are not sentenced to prison terms. In a majority of cases, these are acts without violence, often of little gravity, which still led to a preventive confinement, notes Julie de Dardel. The risk of leakage? “It is not more important than in Basel.”
In “Le Temps”, Olivier Jornot said: “There is a very measured use of pre -trial detention. Today, there are no more than 230 people in Champ-Dollon under the responsibility of prosecutors. I am waiting for being said concretely in which case it would be necessary to give it up. “
*”Prison decrease: geo-ethnography of prison reduction and non-criminal alternatives”
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