The Court of Cassation draws lessons from the violation found by the European Court of Human Rights against France on account of the inadequate conditions of detention in several prisons and remand prisons and the lack of any remedy before the French authorities to remedy the situation effectively (judgment of 30 January 2020, JMB v. France).
The Court of Cassation considers the possibility of unconstitutionality of the articles of the Code of Criminal Procedure which do not provide that the judicial judge may put an end to an attack on the dignity of the imprisoned person resulting from his material conditions of detention. For this reason, it refers to the Constitutional Council the "priority question of constitutionality" that was presented to it in the context of an appeal against a decision rejecting a request for release.
Recalling that any national judge, as the person responsible for applying the Convention, must take into account the decisions of the European Court of Human Rights without waiting for any amendment to the legislation, the Court of Cassation states that it is for the judicial judge to have verified the allegations of inadequate conditions of detention made by a detainee, provided that they are credible, precise, current and personal.
Press release by the Court of Cassation (in French)
