#2026-444France Authorizes the GENESIS Prisoner Data System
AI-generated summary for informational purposes only. Not legal advice. See the original source for the authoritative text.
France authorizes the Ministry of Justice to run GENESIS, a national personal-data system for people who are imprisoned or otherwise under prison custody. The system is meant to support court decisions, sentence management, individual follow-up, reintegration activities, access to rights, and prison security. The decree sets out the kinds of information that may be recorded, including identity details, photos, physical characteristics, family situation, language skills, education, work background, military and electoral status, and criminal-justice information. Prison authorities, justice officials, and compliance teams working around public-sector data governance should treat this as a major prison-data framework with strict privacy and security implications.
AI-generated summary. May contain errors. Refer to official sources for legal decisions.
Key Changes
- Authorizes the Ministry of Justice to operate the GENESIS national prisoner data system
- Defines the purposes of the system, including sentence management, individual follow-up, reintegration, access to rights, and prison security
- Lists the categories of personal data that may be recorded for people under prison custody
Obligations
What this law requires
Operate the GENESIS personal-data processing system only for the listed purposes: preparing and executing judicial decisions concerning persons under prison custody, assisting judicial decisions on sentence application and individualization, managing custody and sentence-execution follow-up, managing access to rights and reintegration activities, and ensuring prison security.
Do not include any facial-recognition functionality using the digitized identity photograph recorded in GENESIS.
Limit identity and identification data recorded in GENESIS for persons under prison custody to the categories specified, including names, aliases, nationality, birth details, sex, identity or residence-document details, digitized identity photograph, physical characteristics, place of incarceration, and prison-register numbers.
Limit personal and family-life data recorded in GENESIS to specified information such as parents’ names and birth details, marital status, number of children, and personal addresses and contact details.
Limit language-related data recorded in GENESIS to specified information such as ability to read and write French, French competence testing, ability to read and write another language, and pre-identification of illiteracy.