“Yannis speaks little. He is polite with the staff. He keeps his cell clean. He reads a lot.” This Wednesday at the Unit for Violent Prisoners (UDV) of Fleury-Mérogis prison (Essonne), it is time for the evaluation.
“He seems to be unpredictable,” the supervisor continues, cautiously. “I can’t put him in a category. Is he just pretending? Is he sincere?”
Around the table set up in an old cell with yellow walls, on the fourth floor of a wing of the largest prison in Europe, the three prison integration and probation counselors shake their heads, disturbed.
The debate begins. “What are we going to do with him? The only thing he says is: + I accept my thoughts and kill people +”, sighs Jessica, responsible for his follow-up. “I asked him: + Have you ever had dark thoughts towards me +? He replied: + No, not yet +…”
“I think he is driven by a desire to do good,” adds officer Manon Blosse, “he has asked me many times: ‘Do you think I am a good person’?”
Imprisoned for facts that the AFP has undertaken not to reveal, Yannis (first name changed), 25 years old, attacked two fellow prisoners with a razor blade in the exercise yard.
He was placed urgently at the UDV.
For six months, he and a handful of other prisoners considered particularly aggressive were isolated there and monitored under tight security.
A team is dedicated to them: a director, 17 supervisors, 3 counselors from the Prison Integration and Probation Service (SPIP), a psychologist and external speakers.
Tailor-made in a prison where a guard is usually in charge of more than 200 inmates.
The objective: to try, through interviews and activities, to reduce their level of violence before reintegrating them among other prisoners.
This device was designed after two attacks by guards in 2018 in Vendin-le-Veil (Pas-de-Calais) and Borgo (Corsica). A first UDV was created in Lille in 2019, ten others have opened since then.
– “Want to progress” –
Today’s meeting aims to assess Yannis’ situation halfway through his treatment. In three months, he must return to a traditional neighborhood. “We are working for the future, when he will be inhabited by impulses that he will have to channel,” summarizes the officer.
Escorted by three agents, Yannis enters the meeting room, hands handcuffed behind his back. His athletic body seems too big for the school chair he sits on, his smile too wide for the solemnity of the committee.
“You seem calm,” says his advisor, Jessica. “Relaxed, I don’t know, but I want to progress,” replies Yannis, who assures that he has “never committed unjustified violence on anyone.”
– Who is competent to say if it is justified? retorts the director of the unit, Marine Denarnaud.
– It depends on each person, decrees Yannis.
– What do you think of the people receiving your violence? Jessica intervenes.
– It hurts…
– Have you learned to feel pain for the victims over the last three months?
– No, it hurts me. Today I count the days, people…
Looks of alarm around him. The team wonders: who are these people? Other potential targets?
The director gives him a pole. “It seems like there are things inside you that don’t want to come out. Why don’t you want to say them? Because it’s wrong?”
Yannis stops smiling. “What is evil? Give me an example. I don’t understand yet. I think I’m wrong.” Silence.
When he arrived in the unit, the security deployed around Yannis was maximum. The guards equipped themselves with protective suits and shields every time they opened the door to his cell.
– “Enjoy seeing suffering” –
Today, these precautions have disappeared, but Yannis’s hands remain tied behind his back. He goes out for a walk alone, in a courtyard with a cramped window and a triple fence for a roof. The goal is to gradually reduce his obstacles, until his departure from the UDV.
At the same time, workshops are offered to get him used to the presence of others and to dissect the causes of his brutal behavior: judo, emotion management, etc.
Every month, the prison team reviews the security measures to be imposed and its program.
This Wednesday, Yannis surprises. “I like yoga,” he says. “We don’t talk too much and we do what we have to do.”
End of the interview, three agents take him back to the cell.
His words did not remove doubts. “I really feel he is dangerous. He protects us from the bottom of his thoughts, but he enjoys seeing people suffer,” said his advisor.
Yannis “cries a lot in the cell,” notes Officer Blosse. She and her colleagues note his conversations and attitude every day. “Yannis has no empathy, but he has real suffering.”
So, what diet should you prescribe?
On the security side, the director wants to “encourage” him. “We’re going to handcuff him from the back to the front, we’ll see if that frees his speech.”
On the reintegration side, Yannis is re-enrolled in yoga, he is going to start playing board games but has not obtained the green light for “ethno-art”, an artistic activity aimed at deconstructing cultural prejudices. The team judges that “he could hurt” with the tools.
New update in a month.
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