France: breaking the silence, challenging the abuse

As a medical student, I was actively involved in the events of May 1968. In 1970, a young colleague of mine told me that the newly opened prison in Fleury-Mérogis was urgently looking for medical interns. I applied and was offered a job starting immediately. I was in a very difficult situation at the time: I had been branded an anti-establishment protester and several accusations had been made against me in the press. I was accused of organising an unlawful protest and attempting to murder a law enforcement officer. I faced serious repercussions because of these accusations, including arrest, imprisonment and police searches. These allegations were published on the front pages of major newspapers and led to a political TV programme I had participated in being axed at the last minute. The show contained a debate between myself and a staunch opponent, the dean of the largest university in Paris. I argued that there was a lack of democratisation at the university. The programme was filmed in advance and was due to be broadcast on prime-time television, but it never aired. The allegations against me ended up being dismissed. A year-long investigation revealed false testimonies by public officials and inconsistencies regarding a set-up.

I was hastily hired at Fleury-Mérogis, before the usual background checks, because of frequent staff shortages and overworked doctors. A few days prior, a prisoner in the disciplinary wing had attempted to slit the throats of two guards, who were seriously injured during the incident. No doctors were on call at the time but, miraculously, the guards survived. My job application arrived that same day. I was trained and experienced in resuscitation and intensive care. I started lecturing at the Faculty of Medicine soon after.

Some time later, my work record came before the Minister of Justice, who was aware of the catastrophic state of penitentiary medical care and ended up reviewing my appointment: he saw the positive contribution that I could make and deemed it would be politically sensitive to fire me.

Five years later, I took part in a closely-watched TV programme on prison medical care, for which I was interviewed at length. The penitentiary administration then, in their words, “arbitrarily” decided to limit the type of role I has to four years - a condition which had never existed before. Thus, my work in prison came to a sudden halt. But my commitment did not.

In the early 1970s, I was involved in the development of the Multi-professional Group on Prisons (Groupe multiprofessionnel des prisons, GMP). This is a discussion group that unites professionals from across the criminal justice field with the aim of breaking down barriers in the system. While working at Fleury-Mérogis, my colleagues and I witnessed countless incidents involving violence, negligence, or a lack of care. A sort of “State within the State” existed with its own rules, particularly, when it came to the use of force. I felt it was necessary to discuss these incidents, help improve the system, and give a first-hand account of what was happening in prisons, rather than keeping quiet or leaving things be. In January 1975, the first GMP Report came out with the motto: “There are times when professional confidentiality is tantamount to complicity”. It is easy to say nothing and use the excuse of “professional confidentiality”.

You must be vigilant to see what lies beneath the surface in the workplace and report it, internally, at first, though this is not without professional risk. If the problem persists, you must then denounce it publicly.

The editorial of the January 1975 GMP Report opened with the statement: “History reminds us on a daily basis that the flow of information is both a driving force for developing ideas and the only way to counteract abuse and misuse of power. Men and women who are deprived of information can neither make themselves understood nor defend themselves. This is true for prisoners and their families, but it remains customary for staff within the penitentiary administration to be sentenced to silence as well. This tradition of remaining silent, this silence with no legal basis, has become a powerful tool for coercion. This is not a question of individual defiance, like suicide, nor of collective rebellion, like the riots that we see escalate year upon year, which have stubborn, sometimes foolish silence as a backdrop. The silence that exists between prisoners and the outside world has begun to crack; newspapers, radio, and television are beginning to enter prisons. Thanks to prisoners’ committees, incarcerated individuals are finding a voice in the outside world”.

For the past fifty years, prison has been the subject of debate. Parliamentary reports state the failings of the penitentiary system all while setting increasingly lofty targets for prisons to meet. It would seem that prison is less and less hidden and increasingly open to examination, monitoring, and, even, external input.

So, what silence should be broken? Some forms of silence actually safeguard the ability to act in prisoners’ best interests, improve their living conditions while incarcerated and increase the opportunities available to them upon release. Unfortunately, discretion is also required in certain situations to avoid inflaming public opinion and antagonising public officials who consider not punishing prisoners to be overly lenient and treating them “too well”.

Other forms of silence perpetuate abuses of power. They allow negligence and unacceptable situations to go unchallenged. Such is the case for the implementation of criminal justice measures causing overcrowding and overrepresentation in prisons: the most underprivileged members of society, including foreigners, are making up a grossly disproportionate percentage of the population in detention. The same can be said for the overrepresentation of people suffering from mental illnesses in prison. We live in a security-obsessed society that would rather funnel individuals into the criminal justice system than admit them into psychiatric care. The response capacity of psychiatric facilities has declined in recent decades, while the number of incarcerated individuals has nearly doubled.

Even prison officials are increasingly asking us to help break the silence as a means of bringing attention to the issues faced in prisons. They believe speaking out will enable them to acquire the resources they need to implement improvements and reform.

The question that remains is: how do we break the silence and what medium should we use to do so? One option is writing. Text is often accompanied by photos of prisoners, who are practically obscured from view by the bars of their cells. These images are a double edged sword : they can reinforce the ‘factual’ nature of an article, to highlight degrading living conditions for instance. They can also be manipulated to make viewers believe in the myth of a “5-star prison-hotel”.

Documentaries and reports are another option, though these can have unexpected effects. A few years ago, a public broadcast was investigating the living conditions of female prisoners, some of whom were incarcerated with their children, in a newly built prison. It wasn’t possible to film the prisoners themselves, so interviews were given by the prison’s guards, childcare supervisors, and director instead. The journalists intended to report on the anguish of the women, who are even more stigmatised than their male counterparts, and that of their children who are confined to the cells with them. The images shown on television were those of new, comfortable-looking facilities, including cells with large windows and seemingly pleasant common areas, all filmed on a sunny day. The reaction to this footage was far from the empathic response that had been hoped for.

I believe that, of all the different forms of media, radio best captures what it is like to be incarcerated. Words and voices convey the depth of individuals, their stories and their lives, whether they be prisoners, their loved ones, victims, staff, or volunteers. In the breath between their words, voices reveal that which images do not show.

Is silence not giving a voice to those whose stories are rarely heard, further reducing them to stereotypes? Without real voices, or even fictional ones, there leaves little room for reflection and hope, which are overshadowed by the morbid desire to punish those who have made others suffer, and to see them suffer in turn. Oftentimes, it is difficult to decide which silence to break in order to change the course of disciplinary, correctional, and penitentiary institutions, and depart from the path engrained in their history.

Despite popular belief, prison is not a monolith. No singular prison exists but rather prisons: huge prisons, tiny prisons where, perhaps, there exists a ‘sense of family’. There are short-stay prisons, that are often overcrowded, and sit on the edge of big cities, amassing prisoners from polar-opposite backgrounds. Most of these prisoners have received short sentences; they are sent to prison, released and, sometimes, sent back in again with little time for any real growth to take place.

Overwhelmingly, they are young men with little education and meagre, sometimes non-existent, financial means. People from very different backgrounds, spanning diverse cultures, religions and nationalities, have to coexist in these facilities.

Some view prison as a means of staying in France; for others, there is the fear of being forced to leave the country.

In contrast, there are high-security prisons, which are much closer to the typical image of prison. Prisoners stay in these facilities for a long time. Some are transferred elsewhere and die of old age. Those deemed the most dangerous are incarcerated here; they lead an isolated life, far from everyone. They work and form a micro-society in prison. The only time their reintegration is brought up is in discussions about reoffending.