For more than a year, curious guests have coexisted with the plants and shrubs carefully planted by Joëlle* in the small garden of her residence on Boulevard Saint-Jacques, in the heart of the 14th arrondissement of Paris. Regularly, this resident picks up supermarket shopping bags, plastic bags or potato nets emptied of their tubers, left abandoned between her flower pots. Sometimes, whole kilos of onions are found on the corner of his building – their owners having only kept their containers. “They fill them with food, electronic items, cigarettes, whatever they want. And then they send them to the prison yard, and leave the waste here,” explains Joëlle. “They” are the shadows that the resident sees pass every evening or almost under her balcony, climbing the gates of her garden before climbing the small iron staircase of the Jean-Dolent nursery school, then reaching the roofs of artists’ studios overlooking the La Santé prison. Renovated in 2019 with the rest of the establishment, the courtyard of the place of seclusion now opens directly onto the street, separated only by a walkway and high stone walls. “There are girls, boys, young and old, who come at all hours of the night to throw packages to the prisoners. They scream, wake us up, are not afraid of the residents or the police,” summarizes Joëlle.
So much so that Régine, who lives in the neighboring artist’s studio, flees Paris for Ardèche as soon as she can. “Since the end of August, I have had daily intrusions on my roof, I hear them every night talking about the price of shit balls and sending their deliveries. They have made my workshop their shop,” he despairs. -she. In several videos, taken in the dark by residents, which L’Express was able to consult, young people climb through the gardens onto the stairs of the nursery school courtyard, passing bags and parcels, before to settle on the roofs. “If it wasn’t so dramatic, it would almost be fascinating to watch,” says Peter*, an Argentinian artist based in one of the workshops. In almost two years, the man has gotten into the habit of returning the metal poles he uses for his art, which have been stolen many times by throwers. He also had the opportunity to learn their vocabulary and methods. “I can tell you that the ball costs 80 euros, that they call them ‘comets’, ‘yoyos’, ‘kites’, ‘lassos’… We see them sending things to the prison side, then we see the packages going up into the cells via some sort of ropes made of plastic bags and connected between the windows,” he says.
On this Wednesday evening in January, these famous ropes move slowly from the prison bars, weighed down by the rain. “Pull the rope, there, I have some slack!” is it possible to hear from the street, while the condemned try to connect these makeshift pieces of string. “We know that the throwers are going to come, but never at what time. We don’t sleep anymore, and when we call the police, they run away,” breathes Joëlle. Like most of her neighbors, the resident preferred to testify anonymously. “When I meet them, they say they’re not going to do anything to me, implying that they could if they wanted. And then, once, I heard: ‘We’re going to kill you, old girl’ “, she sighs. For his part, Peter found his car completely trashed one morning, with broken mirrors and windows. A few days earlier, the man had spoken at length with the police to warn them of this unwanted presence on his roof.
“We see them, but we can’t do anything”
The residents of Boulevard Saint-Jacques are not the only ones to suffer from the nuisance resulting from the renovation of the prison. Along the streets surrounding the penitentiary center, several residents recount, with supporting audio and videos, a daily life made up of wild conversations, insults, the comings and goings of cars honking in the middle of the night, or even mortar fire. “It has become unsustainable. I wanted to sell my apartment, but it lost 25% of its value,” laments Ugo Boscain, president of the association of residents of La Santé, set up by exhausted residents. “We clearly hear the semi-released prisoners boasting about bringing back ‘good quality’ before returning to their cell, and we were even treated to fireworks on New Year’s Eve”, adds Philippe*, another resident, who also observed untimely throwing of packages over the prison wall, sometimes in broad daylight.
In this prison built in the heart of the city, which housed 1,059 inmates as of January 2, 2024 – an occupancy rate of 150% – the sending of these packages is widely confirmed by prison guards, who describe conditions increasingly deplorable exercise. “There are daily screenings inside the prison. We have been asking for years for protective nets to be installed, but nothing is done,” regrets Nadia Labiod, local secretary of Ufap-Unsa Justice. According to her, the prison staff is currently understaffed, leading to more than difficult working conditions for the remaining officers. “They return to their vacations or their days off, they no longer have a private life. At least 20% of agents are missing,” she underlines. In these conditions, it is difficult to enforce the law. “We are in the minority on the promenade, so we cannot interfere, except in the event of a fight. There is a supervisor assigned to a gatehouse as well as cameras, we see the packages arriving, but we cannot do anything “, says Julien*, prison guard at Health.
Every day, his colleagues would watch helplessly as “dozens of packages” arrived in the courtyard, then were consumed directly by the inmates, hidden under their clothes or sent by lasso into the cells. “We find chargers, headphones, Wi-Fi dongles, phones, alcohol, drugs, ceramic knives. Last year, they even threw charcoal for grilling!” says Julien. Once the walk is over, he ensures that searches take place in the cells and on the detainees. “But the understaffing does not allow us to systematically search everyone, which would also lead to too much tension and conflict…” We understand between the lines that this is a lesser evil. For December 31, Julien thus testifies to inmates in a state of intoxication, “who were celebrating like never before” in the courtyard of the establishment. To the point that Ufap distributed a leaflet to prison staff on January 4, denouncing “around forty” screenings for New Year’s Eve alone. “Is there social peace in abundance for our deprive of liberty? (sic) must take precedence over the very foundation of what justice and security are?” asks the union in this document that L’Express was able to consult.
“Around forty” packages for the New Year
Questioned on the question, the prison administration admits that “the phenomenon of projections exists around Paris-La Santé”, and specifies that the fight against the latter “is a constant commitment of the establishment and the prison administration”. “As such, Paris-La Santé is in constant contact with the police headquarters to offer a response including an intensification of police patrols,” it is added. A very meager response for residents of the neighborhood, who have several times alerted the Ministries of the Interior and Justice, the Paris police headquarters, as well as the town hall and the police station of the 14th arrondissement. A collective action for abnormal neighborhood disturbances is underway before the Paris administrative court, for which 84 supporting documents have been provided by the residents. For its part, the 14th century town hall tells L’Express that it has invested “150,000 euros in work in the Jean-Dolent nursery school, in order to reinforce its fences and soon enclose the famous iron staircase [par lequel passent les lanceurs]”. “The intrusions have always taken place outside school hours, and we have never recovered dangerous products in the school yard, just waste or a cooked chicken, for example”, tries to put Amine Bouabbas into perspective. , first deputy of the town hall of the 14th arrondissement, responsible for education.
While local residents are asking the police station to set up permanent patrols around the prison – as was the case before its renovation – a letter from police prefect Laurent Nuñez dated August 10, 2023 tells them that these patrols have notably been “replaced by cameras, as part of the extension of the video protection plan of the police headquarters”. These cameras transmit “video feeds in real time to the 14th arrondissement police station, thus facilitating the identification of suspicious behavior and the intervention of the police”, it is added. In addition, the Paris police headquarters specifies to L’Express that the Health prison is one of the “sensitive points” of the 14th arrondissement, and as such is “the subject of particular vigilance: rounds , patrols and checks carried out day and night by teams in uniform or in civilian clothes, and constant attention by video patrol. The local police station also maintains “a high level of attention around the site in order to combat the phenomena of delinquency and associated nuisances”, indicates the prefecture, which admits that police personnel may be requested by local residents or residents. staff of the penitentiary center for “throwing packages within the prison grounds, firing fireworks or firecrackers, [ou encore] suspicious people filming outside the prison”. Finally, an anti-intrusion project, based on the installation of a horizontal net in order to limit projections, would be “under study”. Since January 1, 2022, 355 arrests were made by the police in the area, including 141 since January 1, 2023.
* First names have been changed.
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