Your letters or telephone conversations may only be monitored or recorded for security reasons.
Monitoring should be used only as an exceptional measure and where your individual circumstances require it. There are several ways that your letters can be monitored, starting from reading them to retaining them. Even if there are security concerns, the prison administration must choose the less restrictive form of monitoring that is effective for your situation.
Privileged correspondence
important Conversations or written correspondence with your lawyer must not be monitored.
Your communication with your lawyer, state institutions, the Ombudsman, the General Controller of Places of Deprivation of Liberty (in French Contrôleur général des lieux de privation de liberté) or the national and international courts should not be monitored. Read more about privileged correspondence.
French law
According to French law, all telephone conversations and letters, except conversations with your lawyer, certain state and international institutions and chaplain, may be monitored. Such indiscriminate monitoring, however, is not allowed by human rights. In order to justify the monitoring of correspondence, the prison administration must have real and well-grounded reasons for suspecting that your correspondence goes against the maintenance of order and security in the prison or against your rehabilitation. A separate decision must be issued by the administration in this case.
How to complain
If your correspondence is being monitored without an adequate reason, it may violate your freedom of correspondence and your right to a private and family life.
If you believe that your correspondence is being monitored without any individual assessment or valid reason, or the restrictions are too severe for your situation, you should complain about this to the French Prison Administration, and subsequently, the Administrative Court. Read more about how to complain.
If the aforementioned proceedings have been unsuccessful, you will later be able to complain about a potential violation of your rights in other national or international human rights institutions.