Cis the huge back-to-school event! No, not the war in Ukraine, nor the forest fires, the lack of water everywhere, or the poor sleeping on the streets, no, the real “scandal” of recent days is this game organized in the prison of Fresnes, one of the most dilapidated in France, overcrowded to 144%. A game called “KohLantess”, in reference to the television program “Koh Lanta”. Three teams – guards, prisoners, young free neighbors of the city – compete around a quiz of general knowledge, in a race while carrying basins of water, then, on one side and on the other of a bucket, pompously named “pool”, they pull on a rope until the opponent falls into the water.
Finally, and this is the whole point of the “debate”, two of the 1,918 prisoners in Fresnes (Val-de-Marne) take part in a go-kart race in the refurbished courtyard of the establishment.
The “supervisor team” won, warmly congratulated by the “inmate team”. And the director of the prison distributed – that was the purpose of the day – checks from donations and sponsors to three charities working for children.
This is the drama that triggered an avalanche of indignant, furious statements denouncing prisons « Club Med », ” camp “facing “children who do not go to the sea” with “criminals” who amuse themselves by bawling, “on the back of our taxes”. Such hypocrisy is rare! Firstly because this day cost the taxpayers nothing, all costs having been paid by the production company. Then, these indictments come from elected officials and political leaders who, knowing the shameful state of our prisons and their overcrowding never before reached in our history, dare, for political reasons, to make our fellow citizens believe that prison life can be summed up on this day. The real scandal is not karting, but the lamentable state of our prisons.
Would they have forgotten the formidable parliamentary report “Prisons, a humiliation for the Republic”, which, in 2000, had shaken France, demonstrating the dreadful life of the people of the cells. A great population of 72,000 inhabitants today crammed into 60,700 places. Some of them, who are in remand prisons (where short-term prisoners and defendants, who are therefore presumed innocent, are detained), locked in cells twenty-two hours a day, two, at three, sometimes even at six or eight, see bedbugs running around that bite them, cockroaches galloping on their bodies.
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