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Security and justice, Raphaël Glucksmann

Prisons and sentences: Against prison overcrowding: tailored sentences and renovated prisons

Direction of change: change of another kind, or uncertain direction, compared with current law.

The lever. Prison places, prison overcrowding, minimum sentences, short sentences, sentence adjustments and alternatives to imprisonment. Direction rule: ↑ more prison places or heavier sentences.

« Lutter contre la surpopulation carcérale en adaptant les peines aux profils des détenus, en investissant dans des prisons rénovées et dignes et dans le renforcement des parcours individualisés de réinsertion. »1

Translation by the editorsFight prison overcrowding by tailoring sentences to inmates' profiles, by investing in renovated and decent prisons and in stronger individualised rehabilitation pathways.

Place publique, « Acte un – Notre vision pour la France » (codirecteurs de la publication : Aurore Lalucq et Raphaël Glucksmann), 23 June 2025. Position taken from a document of the candidate’s party or movement, not from a presidential programme.

Encoding being checked: position recorded at the source, not yet reviewed by the editors.

No programme released. Positions taken from public statements, words of associates or documents of the candidate’s party, each dated and sourced; last recorded on 21 October 2026.

Encoding

No cost-schedule parameter for this position: see the costing for the reason.

Costing

Announced by the candidate

not announced

The cited source does not cost this measure.

Published costings

none

No external costing of this position recorded to date.

Our calculation

not costed

Tailored sentences and renovated prisons, with no number of places or amount: nothing to cost.

Current law, sources and limits of the cost schedule

Current law. At 1 September 2025: 84,311 prisoners for 62,614 operational places, i.e. an occupancy rate of 134.7%. « 15 000 places » plan by 2027, well behind schedule. Modular prisons (target of 3,000 places). Minimum sentences were abolished in 2014.

Horizon. full year 2032, €bn/year

Limits. Investment: €5.55bn / 15,000 ≈ €370k per place, i.e. about €0.06bn per year for 1,000 places if the works are spread over six years. Running costs: about €40k to €60k per place per year, estimated from Title 2 and the operating appropriations of programme 107. This ratio is overestimated because the programme also funds probation (SPIP). Minimum sentences cannot be costed directly: their cost runs through the number of additional prisoners, hence of places. At 134% prison density, additional prisoners without new places cost the budget almost nothing, but worsen overcrowding. Running costs checked against a source: the Cour des comptes (Court of Audit) (2023) gives €105 per day of detention, i.e. about €38m per year for 1,000 prisoners (running costs only, without investment). With investment spread out (about €0.06bn per year for 1,000 places), this gives about €0.10bn for 1,000 places, within the range used. The Council of Europe (SPACE I 2023) gives €127 per day, cited in a National Assembly document. 15,000 plan: 5,411 net places delivered by autumn 2025; the places still to come are published only in gross terms (about 6,500), which prevents costing a moratorium on the remaining places. Rule on public bases (18 October 2026): a moratorium on new places, excluding replacement places, is costed through the parameter as a negative value (extrapolation, flagged as such) on the gross places not yet under construction (2,560 at design-study stage, 1,550 with contracts awarded, i.e. 4,110), converted into net places at the ratio observed for the facilities delivered (5,411 net for 7,384 gross, 73%, which takes out the closures of replaced prisons): about 3,000 net places (editors' calculation; the 2,388 gross places under construction are treated as committed).

How to read these amounts. These are static costs and revenues, with no feedback effect, over a full year: nothing on growth, employment or the revenue that economic activity would gain or lose. A higher net cost does not on its own make a worse policy, nor net savings a better one: each programme rests on an economic model (demand-led stimulus, lower compulsory levies, consolidation of the public accounts…) that the cost schedule does not settle. GDP itself measures a volume of activity, not well-being or the usefulness of what is produced. Economic models and feedback effects.

This lever in the method · Costing for Raphaël Glucksmann

  1. Place publique, « Acte un – Notre vision pour la France » (codirecteurs de la publication : Aurore Lalucq et Raphaël Glucksmann), 23 June 2025, p. 61. Position taken from a document of the candidate’s party or movement, not from a presidential programme. Read the source (Place publique, « Acte un – Notre vision pour la France » (codirecteurs de la publication : Aurore Lalucq et Raphaël Glucksmann)).

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