Pre-trial detention in Côte d'Ivoire is the subject of debate. When it becomes unjustified and systematic, leading to overcrowding and degrading treatment, it becomes intolerable. Penal reforms have been undertaken, but they have not succeeded in curbing the situation. What's more, they reveal the difficulties involved in thinking through changes to the prison and justice systems. Our focus on the tension between the lack of understanding of procedures by those primarily concerned, and the logics of standardization, nonetheless allows us to sketch out a methodological approach to the dynamics of confinement and the state. This book is the result of a desire to cross perspectives. It examines the reform processes at work in Côte d'Ivoire and other countries in the sub-Saharan region, to reveal the "unthought" behind the internationalization of penal reform in this region.

The study "Présumé.e innocent.e ? Étude sur la détention préventive en Côte d'Ivoire" was co-authored by CERDAP², FIACAT and ACAT-CI, as part of the implementation of the project to combat unjustified preventive detention supported by the European delegation in Côte d'Ivoire. While international human rights protection texts do not prohibit the use of preventive detention, they do remind us that freedom is the rule and confinement the exception. In 2014, the Commissioner to the ACHPR and Special Rapporteur on Prisons and Conditions of Detention in Africa made this observation: "Pretrial detainees are often in the shadow of the criminal justice system because their detention and treatment are not subject to the same levels of oversight as convicted prisoners. Prisoners on remand are subjected to conditions of detention that fail to respect their right to life and dignity, and are vulnerable to human rights violations". It is therefore the legal and material conditions governing this practice that need to be studied. Legal analysis cannot dispense with that of the social representations of preventive detention, nor of the judicial practices inherent in its quasi-systematic use. Consideration of all the issues associated with pre-trial detention therefore requires us to place them within a broader reflection on the meaning of penal reform, and to question prison as a political project. The study has thus put into perspective the dynamics on which local players are likely to be able to draw in order to extend and perpetuate their actions in favor of respect for judicial guarantees.