Can the Casabianda detention center be a model to develop?

For the tourist who travels the Eastern Plain in the heart of summer, it is almost impossible to know that only a few minutes fromAleria towards the south, there is the only prison without a surrounding wall in France, located on almost 1,500 hectares. Only a sign indicating a Ministry of Justice property is present on the edge of RT 10.

You then have to drive almost two kilometers towards the sea to reach this penitentiary establishment which is unlike any other.

The Casabianda detention center opened its doors on July 1, 1948, it accommodates detainees convicted of collaboration facts. Its vocation was mainly to welcome individuals convicted of sexual assault; for several years, rare people have been serving sentences there for offenses of another nature.

But if Casabianda is unique in France, it is also because this prison leaves no one indifferent. Neither its detractors and even less those who defend the model. As soon as he took office as Minister of Justice, Gérald Darmanin announced last December that he wanted to build “human-sized prisons”. Many observers have not failed to see in it an allusion to the “open prisons“widely spread in the Nordic countries. And this is where Casabianda can play his part. No surrounding wall, sentences based on work, no prison overcrowding, the Aleria detention center can be a model to follow? “What is certain is that in the north of Europe, we notice that this type of prison is very successful, noted André Giudicelli, professor of private law and criminal sciences at the University of Corsica. You should know that Casabianda inmates are handpicked. These are individuals whose presence has been assessed as not causing a problem.”