The Eris are to the prison administration what the GIGN or the Raid are to the national police and gendarmerie: an elite unit made up of heavily armed agents, trained to intervene quickly when a crisis arises inside. from a jail. This Wednesday, around 11 a.m., an inmate threatens to blow himself up in the courtyard of honor of Health, in Paris. While a negotiator tries to understand the reasons for his action, the Eris burst into the penitentiary center under the dumbfounded eyes of the spectators. Because it is only a demonstration.
In the public, many young high school or university students, who have been invited by the prison administration to discover its professions and its missions. A few seconds later, the false prisoner is handcuffed and – one imagines – taken back to his cell under good escort.
Fayez, 15, applauds. “It was super cool, very interesting. At first I wanted to become a firefighter, but seeing that, I finally want to change. I didn’t know all these trades”, confides, impressed, the high school student who wishes to integrate, after the baccalaureate, this intervention force.
The director of the prison of Health recognizes it: “Prison is a public service that we do not often have the opportunity, fortunately, to rub shoulders with, unlike schools or hospitals. We talk about it quite badly in the media, it remains quite nebulous. It is not a universe that necessarily attracts. We must revalue the positive aspects of the professions,” explains Bruno Clément-Petremann. This “recruitment crisis” falls badly, the number of detainees, in France, having never been so important, he notes.
“A very big challenge in terms of recruitment”
“The prison administration takes care of 250,000 people placed under the control of justice, including 73,000 prisoners”, indicates its director, Laurent Ridel. And it is not over, the government having launched a plan providing for the construction of 15,000 places in prisons by 2027. “We need people to take care of them”, continues Laurent Ridel, adding that the administration whose he has been at the head since July 2022 must take up “a very big challenge in terms of recruiting supervisors”. “The needs are enormous. To succeed, it is necessary to be “more attractive, more competitive on the security market”.
High school students in Drancy (Seine-Saint-Denis), Fatoumata and Andréa ask questions to a supervisor who tries to reassure them about the prison world: “You have to get the idea out of your head that the prisoners are going to attack you . She looks back on her journey. “After passing a competition, there is a six-month training course, then two internships to do. After that, we choose our assignment. Despite her very pedagogical explanations, she did not succeed in convincing the two friends to take the prison administration exam after the baccalaureate: one dreams of being an investigator in the criminal brigade, the other a customs officer. “I see a lot of reports on it on television, but there are fewer on prisons,” she smiles.
“I thought they were sitting all day”
A little further on, a supervisor shows two young people how to handcuff an inmate. “We hold them firmly, the jaws moving towards us,” he explains. Before emphasizing: “It has to be done in a secure way. Do not put yourself in danger but do not be authoritarian. »
Visiting this forum, 16-year-old Ryan discovered that supervisors “do a lot of things.” “While I thought they were sitting on a chair all day,” laughs the teenager, who would like to become a policeman. Laurent Ridel regrets this “image deficit” suffered by the prison administration. “People think that the trades offered are difficult when no two days are alike. We must restore the truth. Everyone can find their place here. Our needs are enormous. »