The first high security prison for drug traffickers in operation on July 31, announces Gérald Darmanin

The first high security prison for drug traffickers will be “a reality” on July 31, announced Thursday January 23, the Minister of Justice, Gérald Darmanin, during a trip to the National School of Prison Administration (ENAP), in Agen.

THE “100 biggest narco bandits” of the country, regardless of their detention status, will be transferred from March to be “put in total isolation” in this establishment “renovated”. Its location was not specified by the Minister of Justice, who promised a location « inviolable »where he will be “absolutely impossible to have telephone or drugs delivered”. And the budget “4 million euros” was released for the establishment of this establishment.

Two more “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 narcobanditry can be [logées à] the same brand »added Mr. Darmanin.

“Differentiate between prisoners and therefore prisons”

Currently, 17,000 people are detained for acts related to drug trafficking and organized crime, according to him. “A very large part of them are dangerous, very dangerous”said the minister, referring to “a significant financial surface, (…) high-ranking complicity and now totally uninhibited violence, as demonstrated by the tragedy of Incarville on May 14.. Which, according to him, requires “differentiate the prisoners, and therefore the prisons”.

On May 14, 2024, two prison officers were killed and three others injured during the ultraviolent attack on their van at the Incarville toll booth (Eure) to free Mohamed Amra. This drug trafficker, suspected of having ordered murders while he was in detention, is still wanted, as are his accomplices.

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”Mr. Darmanin also 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 the specifications of the penitentiary places”he clarified in front of the students of the 219^e promotion of ENAP.

The former Minister of the Interior finally announced the creation, in 2026, of a “prison police” who will be “the third internal security force” of the country, in addition to the police and the gendarmerie. At the same time, a reflection will be undertaken to “recreate” a general inspection of the prison administration.