When you are France's justice minister, what should you tweet about in the middle of summer? No, not the overcrowded conditions in the country's prisons (60,000 places but 72,000 prisoners as of July 1st). Not the successive heatwaves that have hit prisoners and, to a lesser extent, prison staff. Nor the series of suicides at Nantes prison in the west of the country. Instead, on Saturday August 20th, Éric Dupond-Moretti found a more noble cause to do battle over: go-karting.
“After the shocking images from Fresnes prison I have immediately ordered an investigation to shed light on what's gone on. The fight against repeat offending is delivered through rehabilitation but certainly not go-karting!” the aggrieved justice minister declared.
The events about which he was Tweeting took place on July 27th this year. A YouTube programme called 'Kohlantess' and inspired by the popular French TV reality game show 'Koh Lanta' – itself based on the 'Survivor' game show franchise – was filmed inside France's second biggest prison at Fresnes, south of Paris. Prisoners, prison staff and young residents from the local town formed three teams to take part in a series of competitions – quizzes, obstacle courses, a tug-of-war over a temporary pool and go-karting – inside the prison walls. The event raised 1,700 euros for three associations.
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Even as he promised an investigation, can the justice minister really have been unaware of this event? This summer activity was organised by the prison's head of education with the support of the prison's own director Jimmy Delliste. The latter had even greeted the event on Twitter as a “moment of fraternal engagement”. A week later, and again publicly, he spoke of a meeting to assess the “feedback from the experiment”.
Jimmy Delliste, who has been the director at Fresnes since October 2019, first joined the prison service back in 1988 as a warden. He freely communicates about the sporting, cultural and educative initiatives that help reduce the prison's isolation from society, even if just for a few hours, for a small number of the two thousand prisoners under his guard. Not long before the 'Kohlantess' event Mediapart had visited the prison at Fresnes to attend a play performed in front of 90 prisoners.
For the 'Kohlantess' event, as for every major activity organised in prison, the prison service's communications department gave press passes to journalists who wanted to report on it, including in this case Le Parisien newspaper and media culture site Konbini. Only after videos were broadcast by the latter and by the creator of 'Kohlantess' Djibril Dramé – who regularly organises these events in the town of Fresnes itself - on Friday August 19th was there a strong political backlash.
The following day, Saturday August 20th, the justice minister Éric Dupond-Moretti gave in to the chorus of calls for action from Members of Parliament Éric Ciotti from the rightwing Les Républicains (LR), Hélène Laporte of the far-right Rassemblement National (RN), Nicolas Meizonnet (RN), Gilbert Collard from the far-right Reconquête party and another far-right MP, Damien Rieu.
An article in the magazine Valeurs Actuelles a week earlier had already expressed indignation over an initiative which it said gave the prison “the appearance of a leisure park”. The article, which quoted some unhappy wardens as well as the prison director, stated that the event had obtained the “approval of the justice minister Éric Dupond-Moretti's office”. The article's author posed the question: “Has Fresnes prison become one big gigantic ClubMed for prisoners?”
Meanwhile the creator of 'Kohlantess', Djibril Dramé, explained his aims to Konbini: “Everyone who's there is there for a good reason. And the route to rehabilitation is through the work they do in the prison. But we have a real duty not to brush them to one side and not to forget that they are human beings like you and me.”
The Ministry of Justice was contacted and quoted by BFMTV news channel and confirmed that the event had been approved but that the images that had been broadcast did not correspond to what had been agreed.
Back in 2003 Nicolas Sarkozy, who was then minister of the interior under President Jacques Chirac, famously criticised local policing initiatives when he stated that “the police aren't there to organise rugby matches in neighbourhoods but to arrest criminals”. Twenty years later Dupond-Moretti, a former barrister, is rejecting the idea of his prison wardens and prisoners enjoying themselves on a go-kart track. At least, he does so if the far-right criticises him over it.
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- The original in French of this opinion article can be found here.
English version by Michael Streeter