By Julio Godoy
PARIS, Jan 22 2007 (IPS)

Twenty-five years after abolition of the death penalty in France, some of its beneficiaries say they would rather face execution.

“We’d prefer an immediate end to our lives rather than being cooked slowly under a flame,” ten prisoners condemned to life terms wrote in a recent open letter. Before abolition they would have been sentenced to death.

The signatories compared life in French prisons with the prospect of freedom only far into the future with ‘slow execution’.

French human rights groups and lawyers associations agree the prisoners are right to complain about their long sentences.

“Abolition of the death penalty in France 25 years ago was a great step towards preserving human dignity,” Paris lawyer Thierry Lévy told IPS. He is author of a book on the death penalty entitled ‘Eloge de la barbarie judiciaire’ (‘In Praise of Judicial Barbarity’) which was published in 2004.

“But the price some lawbreakers, and we as society, have to pay for this in the form of life imprisonment, is enormous,” Lévy added.

Hamida Djandoubi was the last person to be executed in France in September 1977. He was sentenced to death for murdering his former girl friend whom he forced into prostitution.

More than 525 people are currently serving life sentences in France.

In the mid 1970s, the number was less than 200.

Lévy says the number of life sentences have increased as a “form of compensation” for the abolition of the death penalty.

“In the last years before abolition in 1981, the French judiciary rarely handed down death sentences,” Lévy said.

“If you consider that the nature and the number of crimes have not worsened since 1981, there is no reason for applying life sentences so much.”

A life sentence in France means at least 20 years in so-called “security detention” with no chance of the usual early release for good conduct or a presidential amnesty. Detention can be increased to 30 years and average is actually 27 years behind bars.

Lucien Léger, a “model prisoner”, was until recently the longest-serving prisoner in France with 41 years behind bars.

It was not until human rights groups took up his cause that he was released after a year-long campaign in 2005.

Philippe Maurice, the last to be handed down a death sentence in 1980, was spared by an order on May 25, 1981.

He eventually served 20 years. In prison Maurice studied mediaeval history. After his release, he became a researcher, something of an exception for someone so long locked away.

Maurice owed his reprieve to Robert Badinter, a criminal lawyer and member of parliament for the Socialist Party. He campaigned against the death penalty throughout the 1970s.

A close friend of François Mitterrand, the Socialist opposition leader at the time, Badinter convinced him to support the abolition of the death penalty during his 1980-1981 election campaign.

When Mitterrand won the election in the spring of 1981, one of his first reforms was to abolish of the death penalty. He appointed Badinter as his minister of justice.

Today Badinter is campaigning for reduction of prison sentences and for social reintegration of former criminals.

“One thing we should not forget is that all prisoners will one day or another come out of prison – alive. When this happens, they must be ready to live in society as normal human beings,” he said at a press conference to mark abolition of the death penalty last October.

“Our judicial system must work on facilitating reintegration.”

Many human rights groups consider French prisons especially inhuman.

International institutions and the French parliament have also openly condemned the prison system.

In 2000, a national parliamentary commission called French prisons “a dishonour to our Republican institutions.”

Four years later, another parliamentary report said the “shameful conditions” had worsened.

In a report published early this year, Alvaro Gil-Robles, commissioner for human rights at the Council of Europe, Europe’s top human rights body, said he was horrified at the “shocking” conditions in French prisons, particularly the overcrowding.

Gil-Robles cited the long-prison terms as one reason for the degrading conditions which deprived many inmates of their “most basic human rights”.

Claude Lucas, released after spending some 20 years in prison for bank robberies, agrees the conditions are appalling.

“The death penalty is a shame for a democratic system,” he told IPS. “But to abolish it just to replace it with life sentences is no better. Life imprisonment is torture – abandoned to a degenerative existence.”

Lucas said no judicial system should give prison sentences longer than 20 years. “Beyond that nobody is able to restart a new, normal life.”

“With life sentences, everybody loses – the convicted of course, but also society.” (END/IPS/EU/HD/DP/JG/PH/07)

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