French prison guards continue strike, prisoners under pressure

With French prison guards on strike for the tenth day Wednesday, prisoners are getting antsy, confined to their cells and unable to communicate with the outside world. Prisoners’ rights groups are warning that their frustration could exacerbate the  violence that prison guards are striking against.

Riot police clash with striking prison guards blocking the access to the Baumettes prison on January 22, 2018 in Marseille, as they demonstrate as part of a nationwide movement to call for better safety and wages. boris HORVAT / AFP AFP

“There’s pressure, insults, daily violence. We all have loved ones, and we all hope for one thing: to see them at the end of the day,” Jean-Charles Allen, a prison guard in the southern French city of Marseille, told RFI. “We tell ourselves: I leave in the morning, maybe I won’t come home in the evening."

Some 4,000 to 5,000 prison personnel are physically attacked by inmates each year in France.

Overcrowding is at the root of many of the problems. France’s 28,000 prison officers oversee 70,000 inmates in France’s 188 prisons, many of them over capacity. The Fresnes prison, near Paris has 2,800 inmates, twice as many as it was built for.

Guards say they are underpaid for the dangerous work they are asked to do. The service has trouble recruiting. Last week, nearly 70 per cent of those who signed up for the exam to become a prison guard did not show up for the test.

“Young people come, and then leave, preferring to go work for MacDonalds,” says prison guard Lilianne Balbedon. “A public service job is competing with MacDonalds! That’s a major problem. The job is not appealing, and we have trouble recruiting. They leave because they realise that their lives are in danger.”

Guards went on strike on Monday, 15 January, after a prisoner attacked guards at a facility in the north of France. They are demanding a 20 per cent pay increase, more hires, and tigheter surveillance of violent criminals.

Unions this weekend rejected the government’s offer to create 1,100 new prison officer positions over the next four years and more resources for training and pay.

On Wednesday, the Justice Ministry said 119 prisons were affected, with officers refusing to work at 15.

The strike is affecting prisoners, some of whom report being confined to their cells

“Lots of them are confined in their cells, night and day. They have limited or no access to healthcare, activities, their families,” Cecile Marcel, the director of the French section of the International Prison Observatory (OIP), told RFI.

The OIP has had reports that some prisoners are being given several days’ worth of food in their cells, so that officers don’t have to distribute it daily.

“The effect is a growing frustration, that might have for consequence growing violence against the prison guards themselves,” Marcel says. “This is a vicious circle.”

Radicalism

The attack that set off the strike was by an Islamist inmate, and one of the prison guards’ complaints is that inmates are becoming radicalised by Islamists in prisons. These inmates are treated too leniently, they say.

The government has proposed a specific detention regime for radicalised inmates.

But Marcel says that radicalised inmates are a very small part of the problem. There are about 500, out of the total inmate population of 70,000, and isolating them will not solve the problem of violence in prison.

“Isolating these people will not make them better people,” she says. “And even if we isolated these people, if we don’t deal with the problem of overcrowding in prison in general, for the 69,000 other people, we won’t solve the problem of violence in prison.”