By Matthieu Durand with AFP
Published on •Updated
French prison guards blockaded facilities across the country on Monday, with 14 of 17 prisons in the Hauts-de-France region shut down in protest at chronic overcrowding and staff shortages, in a strike called by the UFAP-UNSA union.
Guards also demonstrated at prisons in Bois-d’Arcy near Paris, Lyon-Corbas and Villeneuve-lès-Maguelone in the south, in some cases preventing prisoner transfers. Guards shut the prison gates in Beauvais, Amiens, Douai and Béthune.
The UFAP-UNSA union is demanding emergency measures to fill an estimated 5,000 vacant guard posts.
The FO union, which represents around 30% of prison staff, did not join the action, saying it came “too early.”
France’s prisons held 88,419 inmates as of 1 April — nearly 25,000 more than the system’s capacity of just under 63,500 places. On 1 March, 87,126 people were held in facilities with fewer than 63,500 places — an occupancy rate of 137.5%.
The prison population is growing by around 200 a week, and UFAP-UNSA’s national secretary Wilfried Fonck expects the 90,000 mark to be crossed by September.
Only Slovenia and Cyprus record higher occupancy rates in Europe, though both countries have far smaller prison populations. The Council of Europe condemned French prison conditions in January, warning that conditions in French jails had become degrading.
Justice Minister Gérald Darmanin has rejected calls for an automatic population regulation mechanism — under which entries into detention would be matched by releases once a threshold is crossed — favouring instead legally binding capacity targets he describes as “clear numerus clausus objectives.”
The bill known as SURE has already passed the Senate and includes a ban on the use of floor mattresses to house additional inmates. No date has been set for its examination by the National Assembly.
The Ministry of Justice plans to open 3,000 additional places, half of them by 2027, in modular prisons for prisoners on short sentences or approaching release.
A 2018 programme to build 15,000 new places has yielded fewer than a third of that target.
Darmanin has also moved to accelerate the expulsion of foreign nationals from French prisons, claiming a 70% increase in such removals between 2024 and April 2026.
Foreign nationals account for 24% of the prison population, down from 26% when he took office in late 2024.