XXL “Place clean” operations do not stop at the doors of police stations or those of judicial courts.
After the offensive against drug traffickers carried out last week in Marseille, and which extended this Monday to other cities in France, the Chancellery insists: prisons must not be excluded.
Also, last Tuesday and Wednesday, the management of the prison administration carried out two strike operations in the Baumettes and Salon de Provence prisons to
“target organized crime”,
underlines is it at the Ministry of Justice
?
From these penitentiary establishments, dealers continue to traffic drugs for use by inmates and continue to structure their criminal activities from their cells.
Thus, prison is nothing more than a hazard that has long been fully integrated into the delinquents.
“Dog brigades and a regional intervention and security team
– the equivalent of the GIGN for the penitentiary (Editor’s note) –
searched fifty cells of personalities involved in organized crime, targeted in particular thanks to Prison Intelligence,”
we say. namely Place Vendôme.
In total, around a hundred agents were mobilized.
According to the Ministry of Justice, this is an operation at the “high end of the spectrum” of drug trafficking.
“
We found 18 mobile phones, six SIM cards and 60 grams of cannabis resin
.”
If the quantity is not neutral for a penitentiary establishment, it is also not spectacular in view of the seizures made at the start of the year, which could have been up to 800 grams.
But at the Chancellery, we insist on the desire “
to suck up and analyze all the data contained in mobile phones
”.
53,000 phones and accessories seized in 2023
On this occasion, the Chancellery lifts the veil on the seizures made in 2023 in the prison grounds, which include the interior of the walls as well as the surroundings of the establishments.
In 2023, 53,000 phones and accessories - including chargers and headphones - were seized, compared to 42,000 in 2019. The scale of the phenomenon had already hit the headlines in 2017, with 40,000 phones seized.
In 2020, there were 36,612, due to the massive releases of detainees due to the Covid-19 epidemic.
Never have cell phone seizures been so significant.
While the criminal population increased by 7% between 2019 and 2023, the number of seizures of electronic equipment increased by 26%.
“And
this even though we have installed jammers in French prisons, at a cost of two million euros per jammer.
How is it that there are more and more mobile phones in prison, especially since prisoners now have telephones in prison?
Obviously their use is not the same as a smartphone which allows an inmate to continue his shenanigans in complete peace or to threaten his victims
,” underlines a very bitter prison director.
As for drug seizures, they are also on the rise.
In 2023, all products combined, the prison administration produced 21,000 compared to 17,000 in 2019.
The publication of these figures comes at a time when the prison administration has just been shaken by the arrest of five Réaux guards who engaged in long-term drug trafficking in detention.
According to the Chancellery, the phenomenon is rare and the sanctions severe, “
since between 2018 and 2023, 22 sanctions were imposed including 19 dismissals for 30,000 agents in daily contact with detainees
”.