“You are a large administration facing immense challenges: in prisons, in places where people under the authority of the judge are deprived of their liberty, part of the Republic is at stake”declared Gérald Darmanin, as a preamble to his speech to the students of the National School of Prison Administration (Enap) located in Agen (Lot-et-Garonne), where he was traveling on Thursday January 23.
The Minister of Justice spoke at length about the attack on a van in Eure in the spring, during which two prison officers were killed. “What happened on May 14 is not only a cowardly, brutal assassination: it is a serious injury to the honor and authority of the State”estimated the Minister of Justice, ensuring that “justice traqu[ait] tirelessly those who are responsible for this massacre”.
Gérald Darmanin then made several announcements, in particular concerning the management of crime linked to drug trafficking within prison establishments. Here's what to remember from his statements.
The first high security prison for drug traffickers in operation on July 31
The Minister of Justice notably announced that the high security prison for drug traffickers, the creation of which he announced at the beginning of January, would be “reality” on July 31. THE “one hundred bigger” The country's drug traffickers, regardless of their detention status, will be transferred from March to this renovated establishment, the location of which was not specified by the minister. However, he promised a place “inviolable”, where he will be “absolutely impossible to have telephone or drugs delivered”.
And the budget “four million euros” was released for the establishment of this establishment. Two other prisons of the same type “will be created in the next two years so that the more than 600 people that prison intelligence indicates to us as particularly dangerous in drug banditry can be in the same boat”, added Gérald Darmanin. Currently, 17,000 people are detained for acts related to drug trafficking and organized crime, according to him.
Creation of a “prison police”
“A revolution” : this is how the minister qualified the coming creation of what he called a “prison police” in 2026, “to make the prison administration our country’s third internal security force.”
This policy must evaluate “security, control and surveillance missions”, he detailed, adding that she “will help[it] the courageous SPIP agents [service pénitentiaire d’insertion et de probation] who put electronic bracelets in neighborhoods where not many people dare go.” “We can’t leave them alone anymore,” hammered Gérald Darmanin.
-Doubling the number of semi-release places by 2027
Judging that the state of the prisons is not “not worthy of a country like France”, with “4,000 mattresses on the floor” and mixed inmates “according, not to their dangerousness, but to their arrival before justice”, the minister announced the doubling, by 2027, of semi-release places.
“That is to say 3,000 places that we will build by the end of this year by completely renovating the constructions and specifications of the penitentiary places”, exposed the Minister of Justice in front of the students of the 219e promotion of Enap. This doubling will be done “by listening more to local elected officials, ready to accommodate places of deprivation of liberty, but not always prisons for extremely dangerous people”.
Future creation of a “general directorate of prison administration”
During this speech, Gérald Darmanin also announced that he was going to propose to the Prime Minister, François Bayrou, the creation of a “general directorate of prison administration”. He wants it to be equipped with “two legs” : “one on prison security and another on integration and probation, in order to give integration and probation officers their full place in a central administration department.”
Expulsion of permanently convicted foreign nationals
The minister also declared that he would launch “a mission to the director of the prison administration to organize, in conjunction with the prefectures”the expulsion of permanently convicted foreigners “in the countries of origin”.
Gérald Darmanin pointed out that “25% foreigners” were detained in France, all places of incarceration combined. “Of course, someone who is not French, who has committed an act, must be able to answer before the courts (…), must have a fair trial and must be able to remain in dignified conditions in our prisons,” he said. Before continuing: “but once definitively sentenced, there is no reason for non-French people to remain in our places of detention.”
