From now, the association that includes these volunteers also occurs in an open environment, in the context of a probationary suspension, a sentence or socio-judicial follow-up.
Prison visitors off the walls, it may seem antinomic. However, among the thousands of volunteers from the National Prison Visitor Association (ANVP) approved by the prison administration to enter the prisons, some now intervene with persons not incarcerated. These “accompanying visitors” are proposed to meet in order to follow them with persons with an open environment, as part of a probationary stay, sentence or socio-judicial follow-up.
“The course towards reintegration can not be done alone, without the civil society taking its part in the accompaniment,” says Yves-Marie Brien, the president of the ANVP, visiting prison for fifteen years to Clermont-Ferrand and visitor accompanying for eighteen months. “The first meeting I made with a person, in a laundry, she did not know how to do”, he remembers. He meets it every two or three weeks, when the appointment with the prisoner insertion and probation advisor is rather every six or eight weeks. This neutrality of the citizen compared to the justice professional is a moral support provided to people chosen, most often in social isolation, says Georges Loss, vice-president of the association.
Rendez-vous in neutral place
Concretely a “tripartite contract” is signed between the person followed, his penitentiary adviser for integration and probation and the accompanying visitor. The appointments are held in a neutral place (prohibition for the visitor to receive at his home), while the prison administration provides the visitor a mobile phone so that calls are not on his private number.
Created in 1932, from the company Saint Vincent-de-Paul – a network of Charity of Proximity -, the ANVP timidly started, five years ago, this evolution, in the context of an agreement With the Directorate of Prison Administration, while the number of people running an open sentence increases much faster than the number of detainees. Today, there are more than 165,000 people with open environment, more than double the number of people incarcerated (70,000). To concretize this new field of intervention, the association has reborn, end 2021, “National Association of Visitors of People with Justice” (keeping the same acronym, ANVP).
While the average age of prison visitors is 63 years old, development in the open environment should also affect non-retired volunteers. Template schedules, limited daily and exceptional day on Saturday, hold assets away from this activity.