2024-02-23 03:45:06
An inmate smokes in a cell at the Neuvic penitentiary center (Dordogne), in October 2019. GEORGES GOBET / AFP
Prison connoisseurs are always amused by the astonishment of the visitor who sees the halo of blue smoke and smells the odor of grass that hits the throat in the passageways of certain penitentiary establishments. Drugs are a companion of detention. Its use distorts the passage of time, helps to cope with the difficulties of confinement, promiscuity and boredom. She “moves freely”as both inmates and guards testify.
This is because the consumption of drugs in detention, particularly cannabis, is a massive fact: 18,187 seizures of narcotics in places of detention were made in 2022, according to unpublished figures from the Ministry of Justice that The world obtained; 95% concerned “shit” or “weed”, the The rest consisted of other substances, such as cocaine, crack or heroin.
Inmates obtain them by projection, thanks to accomplices who come to the outskirts of the prison and throw the packages over the walls, by means of drone deliveries, but also during visiting rooms, especially since the end of compulsory strip searches in 2009. More rarely, it is with the complicity of guards or external workers that the prisoners obtain their supplies, who then pay for their dose at prices sometimes twice as high as outside.
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One of the suppliers at Neuvic prison (Dordogne), nicknamed “Coffee Shop” by other inmates because his cannabis supply was so wide, was sentenced to two years in prison by the Périgueux judicial court in the summer 2022. His partner, also convicted, had the habit of hiding the drugs in her bra before passing them to her under the table during visiting rooms. Coffee shop, which placed orders through the social network Snapchat, stored the loot in its cell (where 150 grams of cannabis had been discovered during a search), before reselling it to its captive customers.
80% of prisoners smoke tobacco
The Besançon remand center was the scene of a more dramatic affair. On December 29, 2023, two fellow prisoners, aged 34 and 36, were found dead in their cell. Medical reports implicate an overdose probably linked to the absorption of a cocktail of heroin and drugs. An unprecedented situation, according to the prison administration, which only records a handful of overdose deaths each year. On January 25, another inmate from Besançon and his partner were indicted for supplying the drug that caused the deaths.
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