After four years of work, the prison of health, in Paris, welcomes on Monday its first prisoners, in fully renovated premises and, for the first time in France, equipped with both jammers and landline phones. cell.
Some 80 detainees will join the venerable institution – 2.8 ha in the heart of the 14th district of Paris – from the overcrowded jails of Fresnes (Val-de-Marne) and Fleury-Mérogis (Essonne). They will be assigned to the general service, for a first major cleaning, before the gradual arrival of other residents, at a rate of 25 per week from mid-January.
An occupancy rate of 150% from 2019?
With an initial capacity of 808 places, including around 100 in semi-liberty neighborhoods, the establishment could reach a occupancy rate of 150% by the end of 2019, while some of the detention centers in Île-de- France are already 200%. In this perspective, the majority of cells have already been equipped with two beds.
Inaugurated in 1867, the prison that saw captain Alfred Dreyfus, the terrorist Carlos or the trader Jerome Kerviel had never been thoroughly renovated. Over the years, it had become a symbol of the dilapidation of French prisons. The works, carried out in a public-private partnership, cost a total of 210 million euros for three years of construction and 25 years of operation.
This reopening will be test-worthy: Health is “the first prison to be equipped with both a new mobile jamming system and fixed-line telephones in the cells,” says school director Christelle Rotach. A revolution in detention and the culmination of a project launched last January by the Minister of Justice Nicole Belloubet.
More than 40,000 phones and accessories seized in 2017
The government has taken a twofold note: the inefficiency of the jamming – only 10% of the 804 cell phone jammer currently in prison are effective – and the proliferation of mobile phones in detention. In 2017, a new record was broken: 40,067 phones and accessories were seized in the 180 French prisons which then counted nearly 70,000 prisoners.
The jamming of the laptops was entrusted for a period of six years to the French company SAGI.fr. After Health, it will be gradually extended to other institutions. At the same time, a ten-year public service concession on fixed telephony was granted to Telio, one of the European leaders in the sector.
“The access to the fixed telephone in cell is an element of appeasement of the detention. Prisoners will be able, without restriction, to call their families “, without having” need to ask the supervisors who will be able to devote themselves to other tasks “, explains Christelle Rotach. An innovation that will, hopefully, the Directorate of Prison Administration (DAP), contribute to suicide prevention and better reintegration.
Prisoners will only be able to call numbers that have been validated beforehand. No telephone will be installed in isolated or disciplinary areas.
The company will finance the entire investment and will be paid by the price of communications paid by the inmates. The cost of a call to a fixed will amount to 0.08 euro per minute and 0.18 euro to a mobile phone in mainland France – about ten times less than currently.
On the eve of the reopening, “everything works”, ensures Christelle Rotach. And, she adds, “if it works in Health, where it was necessary to calculate as accurately as not to scramble the communications of residents, it will work anywhere else.”
For Rotach, the tour de force was also to keep the Health in its historical millstone case while building a modern prison: dugout gyms, open walks, glass roofs were pierced above the passageways.
The light has also entered the cells: the windows, very high, have been lowered to the height of man. Sanitary, shower, electric hob and fridge were installed. Far from the “unworthy” conditions of detention of some prisons that have earned France to be condemned at European level.
The neighborhood of “individuals”, intended for the most vulnerable people and “VIP”, will remain. Health will also take its share in the reception of radicalized prisoners, under the watch of 380 supervisors.