In 2024, 110 people died in France for reasons linked to drug trafficking and another 341 were injured in accidents or account adjustments. Although they are lower figures than those of 2023 —139 dead and 413 injured – in the Ministry of Interior they consider that they remain unacceptable. Your solution: attack the problem at the origin.
7,000 kilometers … and with a jail.
The plan. Gérald Darmanin is the Minister of Justice of France and, a few weeks ago, announced the opening at some time of 2028 of a new maximum security prison. As we say, curiously it will not be on European continental soil, but in the French Guiana on the other side of the Atlantic.
In an interview, Darmanin commented that the goal of this third high security prison in France is to “leave the most dangerous drug trafficking profiles out of play.” And, precisely, that those drug traffickers are at that distance from continental France will contribute to “take them away lasting their mafia networks.”
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Cocaine route. French Guiana is a overseas territory in France. Previously a colony -but abolished as such after the French Revolution -, this French territory has established itself as a key platform for cocaine traffic from Brazil and Surinam to Europe.
The figures scare: It is estimated that between 15% and 20% of the cocaine that enters France, it does so through the French Guayana Route-Paris. It is done through “mules”, person (young and single mothers, especially) who are pushed by situations of extreme poverty to accept about 7,000 euros per successful trip to Europe carrying the merchandise. And the estimate is that, on each flight from Cayena (the capital of the territory) to Paris, they travel between 20 and 30 mules, of which one third manages to pass without attracting attention.
The jail. The objective of France is to build the new prison in the commune of Saint-Laurent-Du-Maroni. It will be about seven kilometers from the urban center and very close to the border with Surinam, one of the hot points of that cocaine route. The estimated budget is about 450 million euros and the intention is that the complex, in addition to the prison itself, includes a court to expedite all judicial processes and procedures associated with inmates.
It will have capacity for 500 inmates, of which 60 will be classified as “maximum security” and another 15 as “terrorists”, with a wing especially destined for those more dangerous inmates and will not only serve to fight drug trafficking, but to give a respite to the other prison of the French Guiana, a Rémon-Montjoly that has a capacity for 614 inmates and houses almost a thousand. And that the inmates nickname “dry guillotine.”
Past ghosts. It may seem like a fissure plan to build a maximum security prison in the heart of drug trafficking towards your main territory, but far from it. The problem, or one of them, is all that it entails … and the historical precedent. Inspired by how the British used Australia, Napoleon III established a criminal system in the French Guiana that served as the main overseas criminal colony of the country from 1852 to 1953.
In that century, especially the islands of salvation and the island of the devil, they became the point where both common criminals and political prisoners shared space. They performed forced labor, severe punishments and there was a very high mortality rate: 75% in the blackest points. The few who could return to France told their stories in the place, making public opinion promote the gradual closure of the facilities that are currently a focus of tourism.
And fear. And as we read in BBC, the idea of returning to the French Guiana that condition of ‘overseas prison’ has outraged its population. A local deputy, Davy Rimane, considers that it is a unilateral decision by France, since they have not had the deputies of Guayana and that “transferring criminals from high level to Guayana, people who France do not want, return us to a terrible past, painful and full of suffering.” Because they are not only drug traffickers, but also Islamist terrorists who will be relocated to this prison.
Rimane points out that they are not “the France dump.” Also in statements to BBC, the criminologist Marion Vannier of the University of Manchester considers that it is “a bad idea” to go from wanting one jail to relieve the other present in the country to devise a new system in which there are dangerous prisoners and high -level drug traffickers. “
As we say, the idea is that France has its new overseas prison from here to three years, but we will see if the plans are fulfilled because the Francaguayans do not seem happy with the idea of returning to that dark past 70 years later.
Image | Ministry of Justice
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