Prison guards demonstrate in Béziers (southern France) in front of the local prison.Image: EPA
Guards across the country are blocking entrances to prisons to protest the scandalous conditions. What is going wrong in the neighboring country.
April 30, 2026, 10:56 p.mApril 30, 2026, 10:56 p.m
This week, hundreds of guards followed the call of their union Ufap-Unsa and blocked access to around half of the institutions in France. In order to put pressure on a meeting with the prison directorate, they went on strike in some places until Wednesday. This was also the case in Rennes (Brittany), where a prisoner brutally beat up a guard on Monday.
Those affected by the protests included, for example, the notorious Les Baumettes institution in Marseille and Fleury-Mérogis, the largest prison in Europe with 4,500 inmates in the southeast of Paris. Since then, guards have been blocking the entrances, setting wooden pallets on fire or hanging banners with the inscription “Fully booked” on the heavy metal gates.
As union secretary Alexandre Caby explained, the “catastrophic” situation in French prisons is primarily due to overcrowding, which has been increasing for years. France has 63,500 cell spaces but has 87,126 inmates – more than ever before. The three of them usually share a cell of nine square meters. New arrivals have to sleep on a mattress on the floor. Of these, 7,000 are in use.
Out of anger, the demonstrating guards light a fire in front of the prison entrance.Image: EPA
And most of them are dirty and bugged, as the Council of Europe stated in a report on the – officially renovated – Fresnes asylum near Paris: “The prison conditions are indignant, the rooms and cells are damp, old and unhygienic, with the alarming presence of rats, cockroaches and bed bugs.”
The promiscuity in the cells, showers and courtyards causes constant “tension and violence,” as Caby explained. The guards are increasingly losing control because they are traditionally unarmed and hardly able to deal with the most dangerous inmates.
Justice Minister Gérald Darmanin inaugurated a high-security wing in Vendin-le-Vieil (northern France) in mid-2025; In the overseas department of Guayane – where the cocaine trade is flourishing – he wants to build a so-called “Supermax” isolation facility based on the American model. But that is not enough for the 10,000 drug dealers and thousands of jihadists in the country.
iPhones delivered free of charge
Smaller dealers and criminals are also increasingly escaping custody: 80,000 cell phones were confiscated from French prison cells last year. Accomplices send the latest iPhones free to your home via drone. The authorities are fighting against this with bars, jammers and detectors. With limited results.
The main reason: According to Ufap-Unsa, there are currently 5,000 guard positions unfilled in France. This enables convicts to continue their business even behind bars. In March, after months of surveillance, police in Marseille arrested 41 people from a drug ring that supplied the city center around the old port. Her boss controlled the trade from his cell in the Baumettes, as if he were sitting on the sofa at home, and in doing so possibly even organized a social murder. It was in his cell that he was announced that he would be arrested again.
Strike in front of the La Santé prison in Paris.Image: AP
What the union likes to keep quiet: Cell phones and also drugs are sometimes supplied by corrupt supervisors. In the Baumettes, inmates were not only provided with cell phones, but also with vodka, cannabis, cash and a hair restorer. It should be said, however, that the dangerous supervisory job is only rewarded with 2,000 euros per month.
France today simply lacks the means to set up a functioning prison system. The miserable prison conditions do not contribute to rehabilitation: almost half of French prisoners relapse. Reintegration by the state usually fails unless non-profit organizations step in.
Justice Minister Gérald Darmanin is currently planning a new sentencing law that aims to favor shackles or house arrest instead of shorter or phased-out prison sentences. He wants to stop the distribution of mattresses in overcrowded prisons. Darmanin did not say what new prisoners should lay their heads on instead. (aargauerzeitung.ch)