Prison life
Read the text “Prison Conditions Shock France” and answer the questions.
Prison Conditions Shock France
By Suzanne Daley
New York Times Service
PARIS – When Dr. Veronique Vasseur began working at La Sante prison in Paris, the experience was so shocking that she started keeping a diary.
Within days, she had met inmates so deranged or depressed that they had swallowed rat poison, forks or drain cleaner.
Skin diseases were rampant because showers were only available twice a week, though temperatures sometimes soared to more than 35 degrees Celsius in cramped cells holding four prisoners each.
Inmates stuffed their clothes in the cracks in their cells to keep the rats out, and most of the mattresses were full of lice and other insects. Some of the weaker prisoners, Dr. Vasseur came to understand, had been turned into slaves by their cell-mates.
Dr. Vasseur’s account of her work at La Sante over the last seven years has just hit the bookstands, and it has caused uproar, prompting even the justice minister, Elisabeth Guigou, to admit that France’s prison system is not something it can be proud of.
“The situation in a lot of our prisons is not worthy of a country such as ours,” Guigou said, shortly after the first excerpts from Dr. Vasseur’s book, “Chief Doctor at La Sante Prison,” began appearing in the press.
While the French pride themselves on being standard bearers for human rights, Dr. Vasseur’s book has brought home some hard truths.
To start with, nearly half of the country’s 55,000 prisoners have never been convicted, a fact that has repeatedly drawn criticism from the European Court of Human Rights.
Moreover, 124 inmates committed suicide in 1999, giving French prisons one of the highest suicide rates among European penitentiaries.
While the presumption of innocence is a benchmark of most democratic states, French law allows investigating magistrates to put suspects in jail indefinitely without trial or bail. On average, inmates who have not yet been tried spend four months in jail. But some have spent far longer, and then been freed when the magistrate has decided that there is not enough evidence to bring charges.
Last week, some of France’s most famous former prisoners – including former ministers, top business people and political activist Jose Bove, who went to jail for vandalizing a McDonald’s restaurant – signed a petition deploring prison conditions.
Responding to a mountain of inquiries, French officials last week allowed journalists a rare look inside the walls of La Sante, a penitentiary that has in its 133-year history housed such famous prisoners as the poets Paul Verlaine and Guillaume Apollinaire and, more recently, the convicted assassin known as Carlos. Public guillotinings used to take place just outside its gates. During World War II, resistance fighters were executed there.
Prison officials contend that Dr. Vasseur’s book fails to take into account the improvements that have been made in recent years, including a fresh coat of paint and an increase in educational and entertainment activities.
“There is an element of generalization that gives a very wrong impression,” said Alain Jego, the warden of La Sante, before offering a two-hour tour of the building, “I’d be an idiot if I said there was no violence, no rape. But the book gives the impression it’s 10 a day, and that it is not so.”
Why was the experience shocking for the reporter?
What do most prisoners look like?
What were the living conditions in cells?
How were human rights violated in La Sante prison?
Why were journalists allowed to inside the walls of the prison?
Read the text in Russian and speak on the following topics in English:
What conditions can “Matrosskaya Tishina” prison offer to prisoners of the so-called special division?
Compare the Swiss prison to the Russian prison. What personal belongings are available?
What can a prisoner have in the way of food? Payable conveniences?