Should prisoners have a mobile phone? Their prohibition “is largely bypassed by prisoners, forcing the prison administration to use waves of wave with very variable efficiency”, observes the general controller of places of deprivation of freedom (CGLPL) in a notice published on Wednesday at Official Journal. About 40,000 laptops were, in fact, seized in prisons in 2024, according to the Ministry of Justice. For Dominique Simonnot, “a reflection must be engaged on the possibilities of controlled access” to these devices behind the walls of penitentiary establishments while their use has become “so banal”.
Since 2019, fixed phones, the use of which is limited to certain numbers, have been installed in each cell. The CGLPL denounces “the particularly high cost of telephony” which constitutes “a considerable barrier to access to the telephone of the detained persons”: 8 cents per minute to a fixed phone, 18 cents per minute to a mobile. This old feather of Chained duckat the head, since October 2020, of this independent administrative authority, also points out “the prohibitive price” of the videophonia. A device yet adapted to “prisoners with hearing impairment”.
Prices that “encourage by law by law”
“The question of the cost of calls should not be overlooked,” confirms to 20 Minutes Matthieu Quinquis, the president of the International Prisons Observatory (OIP). “We regularly suggest that prison is a bit like Club Med, that prisoners have everything they want. But the phone is one example among many others because of prison, in reality, it is a financial overload for detained persons and their loved ones. It costs extremely expensive. Today no one outside would pay calls for that price, it would be indecent. These are private companies that take advantage of this system, ”he explains.
Matthieu Quinquis stresses that this is a “real difficulty for detained persons, who are often in situations of fairly important vulnerability and economic precariousness”. Above all, he says, the prices practiced “encourage the bypass of the law and which deprives the administration of a certain number of control measures to which it inspires”. “It is certainly counter -productive. »»
“Combins” to bypass controls
“There are several ways to bring phones into detention: the visiting rooms, the complicity of people who work in prison, launchers, drones …”, recently explained to 20 Minutes a judicial source.
Secretary General of the Supervisors’ Penitentiary Syndicat (SPS), Christy Nicolas understands that he is, for prisoners, “more interesting (financially) to have a mobile phone”. “It’s a real scourge,” he explains. We end up with prisoners who have several phones, if you enter them, they get others during the day. “They use it to call, but also” to go to the Internet and social networks “. Some have even become stars on Tiktok.
If they were allowed, “there would be fewer conflicts between staff and prisoners”. But they are prohibited, he underlines, for security reasons. “They could use them to have weapons or explosives delivered,” he fears. Prisoners could also make use of it “to exert pressure on witnesses or victims”, “threaten the staff” of reprisals outside the establishment or “continue to manage their affairs” during their imprisonment.
Christy Nicolas does not believe that their calls, if they had made with mobile phones, could be checked. Prisoners have already “combined” when using fixed phones installed in cells. “They call a recorded number and make a call to another issue,” he said.
“A defeat speech” for Gérald Darmanin
The Minister of Justice admitted that the current telephony system in detention is “very aging”. The cost of communications passed by prisoners is “the most expensive in France”, recognized Gérald Darmanin on France Inter this Wednesday. “It is a delusional system. “He undertook to” listen “to the proposals of the CGLPL. But he warned that, for him, “accepting mobile phones everywhere” in detention would constitute “a discourse of defeat”. He indicates that detainees could use them to command “assassinations” from their cell. The Keeper of the Seals quotes the example of Mohamed Amra, who undoubtedly “organized” with a mobile phone his escape during which two penitentiary agents lost their lives.
“This is why we are going to discriminate the prisoners,” said Gérald Darmanin. “There are those who deserve to be reintegrated very quickly and therefore the penitentiary regime must be different including in communication and then there are those who are very dangerous people and they must deprive them absolutely from any external communication . »»
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