100 ultra-dangers inmates isolated to dismantle drug networks

The concrete block appears between the plains and the first police escorts, beaty lit, slip to the doors of the penitentiary center under the curious gaze of the cameras. Even the chickens, in the shared garden a few steps, take out a head from their wire enclosure. In the former Pas-de-Calais mining basin, the first 17 detainees of the vast isolation program for the main drug networks, wanted by the Minister of Justice, Gérald Darmanin, joined the ultra-seconded prison of Vendin-le-Vieil on Tuesday July 22. They will be 100 to July 31.

With great communication reinforcements on social networks, the Keeper of the Seals welcomed it. In January, he announced that he wanted to bring together the “most dangerous” drug traffickers in a prison thought as the laboratory of a new French isolation policy. Inspired by an Italian device which weakened the mafia networks by an extreme deprivation regime of freedom, this model aims to break the command chains of criminal leaders, leading traffic from their cell.

A turn in French prison policy. The escape of Mohamed Amra, in May 2024, acted as a catalyst. During a transfer before the investigating judge, the one that the police nicknamed “the fly” had been released by a dozen armed accomplices, attacking the bolder car and killing two penitentiary agents to the Incarville toll (Eure). “The shock was immense for the penitentiary and judicial world,” breathes a seasoned public prosecutor, who saw Mohamed Amra pass in his offices. It is really from there that there was an awareness and a desire to create a Narco-Prison. »»

Change of doctrine

In four months, Vendin-le-Veil prison was emptied and refurbished. The prisoners incarcerated in the Pas-de-Calais fortress were transferred to other detention centers across the country. Four million euros in work was initiated by the Ministry of Justice. Inside, an iron bed frame, a metal sink and a summary shower, in cells designed for a single inmate. Bright colors remain on the walls: pink, garnet, pistachio green. Vendin-le-Vieil aims to be the window of the national prison system.

Since its commissioning in 2014, the establishment has been at the forefront of advances with its telephone jammers or its radicalization assessment districts for jihadist prisoners. An ultra-secure apparatus, which the successive ministers of justice hastens to mediate, but which is an exception in a country where prison overcrowding can reach 200 %, as in the Bois-d’Arcy prison (Yvelines), where prisoners sleep on a mattress on the ground.

“The goal is to cut them from the world”

The change of doctrine is very real. These 100 prisoners, selected by the Keeper of the Seals itself (according to criteria still blurred), will be subject to almost total isolation for a period of four years, renewable. With the Narcotrafic law, promulgated in June, the hearings before the judges will be made of videoconferencing, and the health extractions will only be authorized in the event of an extreme emergency. “The objective is to cut them from the world,” summarized Marc Ginguené, the director of the establishment, in front of a partner of journalists in early April. Caillebetis have been installed in the windows to prevent any intrusion of objects from the outside. The walks will be limited to five people. The full excavations will be systematic after any closed -door exchange with a doctor or a lawyer.

Protect agents

The hardening of the conditions of detention also transforms the daily life of the staff. No agent, whether supervisor or caregiver, can now be alone with an inmate, in order to prevent any attempt at corruption or intimidation. “We are going to double our workforce and recruit parts-time,” said a manager of Lens hospital, whose doctors will intervene on site, equipped with surgical masks and bullet-proof vests.

Can this device be generalized? It supposes means, especially in terms of recruitment. They are 226 penitentiary staff in Vendin-le-Vieil: nearly three agents per detainee. Far from the national average … (an agent for almost two detainees). Above all, behind this safe communication, the penitentiary world questions a possible effect of communicating vases: to make room in these ultra -buyed prisons, it would be necessary to accelerate early outputs and facilitate the adjustments of pain, in order to unclog the entire prison system. A prospect refuted Gérald Darmanin, who also said that the other 100 “most dangerous prisoners” will join a new Narco-Prison, in Condé-sur-Sarthe, in Orne. Their transfer is scheduled for October.