French Code of Criminal Procedure
In forceConditional release aims to reintegrate convicts and prevent re-offending.
Conditional release may be granted to convicts who have to serve one or more custodial sentences if they demonstrate serious efforts to reintegrate and where they can prove:
1° Either the exercise of a professional activity, an internship or temporary employment or their attendance at education or vocational training;
2° Or their essential participation in the life of their family;
3° Or the need to undergo medical treatment;
4° Or their efforts to compensate their victims;
5° Or their involvement in any other serious integration or reintegration project.
Subject to the provisions of Article 132-23 of the Criminal Code, conditional release may be granted when the length of the sentence served by the convicted person is at least equal to the length of the sentence remaining to be served. In the case provided for in this paragraph, the probationary period may not exceed fifteen years or, if the sentenced person is a repeat offender, twenty years.
For those sentenced to life imprisonment, the probationary period is eighteen years; it is twenty-two years if the sentenced person is a repeat offender.
When the person has been convicted of a felony or misdemeanour for which socio-judicial supervision is incurred, conditional release may not be granted if he or she refuses while incarcerated to follow the treatment offered to him or her by the sentence enforcement judge pursuant to articles 717-1 and 763-7. The same applies when the sentence enforcement judge is informed, pursuant to article 717-1, that the offender is not regularly following the treatment proposed. Parole may also not be granted to a sentenced person who does not undertake to follow, after his release, the treatment offered to him pursuant to article 731-1.
When the convicted person is over seventy years of age, the length of sentences served provided for in this article do not apply and conditional release may be granted if the convicted person's integration or rehabilitation is assured, in particular if he or she is the subject of care adapted to his or her situation on leaving the prison establishment or if he or she provides evidence of accommodation, except in the event of a serious risk of repetition of the offence or if such release is likely to cause a serious disturbance to public order.
When the sentenced person benefits from a sentence suspension measure on the basis of Article 720-1-1, conditional release may be granted unconditionally as to the length of sentence served if, at the end of a period of one year after the suspension measure was granted, a new expert report establishes that the convicted person's physical or mental health is still permanently incompatible with continued detention and if the convicted person can provide evidence of care appropriate to his situation.
