It is a field visit between four walls. Jean Castex went to Fleury-Mérogis remand center in Essonne on Monday, the largest prison in Europe, which he visited for two hours to see the living and working conditions there. .
Accompanied by the Keeper of the Seals Eric Dupond-Moretti, the Prime Minister surveyed the corridors of the block reserved for adults, from the visiting rooms to the medical unit through the probation insertion service (Spip). Plunging into a cramped cell, TV on in the background and counting the days engraved on the wall, Prime Minister Castex exchanged a few words with a detainee of Serbian origin who had just come out of his shower.
Eric Dupond-Moretti at the Medef summer university
In another cell, a man in his thirties, imprisoned for 12 months, explains to him his desire to be able to work in the prison workshop, which offers a thousand places for 3,602 inmates to date according to the director of the Franck Linarès establishment. While only a large quarter of prisoners in France work, Eric Dupond-Moretti repeated his intention to “restart the machine”. “I will soon be going to the Medef summer school to appeal to the bosses,” he says.
Questioned by a Force Ouvrière supervisor, Jean Castex announced in passing that he was satisfying one of their salary demands, by granting the retroactivity of a bonus (compensation for prison charges) over the whole of 2021, while it was only supposed to be active during the year. The envelope is thus raised to 5.3 million euros, an average annual increase of around 200 euros per person.
The complicated management of Covid-19
The Prime Minister also spoke about the vaccination campaign with the head of service Valérie Kanoui, who detailed the difficulties related to entries and exits. “It’s gymnastics, it requires flexibility” but “it’s complicated to organize” especially on the dose orders, said the manager. Currently, 21 detainees and 10 staff have tested positive for Covid-19, after massive screening carried out last week. In this prison, whose occupancy rate stands at 127%, slightly below the national average for remand centers (132%), four clusters have been detected since February.
While the court of Sarreguemines (Moselle) plans to grant reductions in sentences to detainees if they are vaccinated, Jean Castex also said not to “condemn in principle” the initiative but does not wish “in any case” generalize it.