French Prisoners Research Articles

NAPOLEON AND THE ‘CITY OF SMUGGLERS’, 1810–1814

In the final years of the Napoleonic Wars, Napoleon allowed English smugglers entry into the French ports of Dunkirk and Gravelines, encouraging them to run contraband back and forth across the Channel. Gravelines catered for up to 300 English smugglers, housed in a specially constructed compound known as the ‘city of smugglers’. Napoleon used the smugglers in the war against Britain. The smugglers arrived on the French coast with escaped French prisoners of war, gold guineas, and English newspapers; and returned to England laden with French textiles, brandy, and gin. Smuggling remains a neglected historical subject, and this episode in particular – the relationship between English smugglers and the Napoleonic state between 1810 and 1814 – has attracted little scholarly interest. Yet it provides a rich historical source, illuminating not only the history of Anglo-French Channel smuggling during the early nineteenth century, but offering insights into the economic, social, and maritime history of the Napoleonic Wars.

Prevalence and factors associated with alcohol and drug-related disorders in prison: a French national study.

BackgroundMost studies measuring substance-use disorders in prisons focus on incoming or on remand prisoners and are generally restricted to drugs. However, there is evidence that substance use initiation or continuation occurs in prison, and that alcohol use is common. The aim of this study is 1) to assess prevalence of both drug and alcohol abuse and dependence (DAD/AAD) in a national randomised cohort of French prisoners, short or long-term sentence 2) to assess the risk factors associated with DAD/AAD in prison. a stratified random strategy was used to select 1) 23 prisons among the different types of prison 2) 998 prisoners. Diagnoses were assessed according to a standardized procedure, each prisoner being assessed by two psychiatrists, one junior, using a structured interview (MINI 5 plus), and one senior, completing the procedure with an open clinical interview. At the end of the interview the clinicians met and agreed on a list of diagnoses. Cloninger's Temperament and Character Inventory (TCI) was also used.ResultsMore than a third of prisoners presented either AAD or DAD in the last 12 months. Cannabis was the most frequent drug and just under a fifth of prisoners had AAD. AAD and DAD were clearly different for the following: socio-demographic variables, childhood history, imprisonment characteristics, psychiatric comorbidity and Cloninger's TCI. Profiles of AAD in prison are similar to type II alcoholism.ConclusionRegular screening of AAD/DAD in prison, and specific treatment programmes taking into account differences between prisoners with an AAD and prisoners with a DAD should be a public health priority in prison

Amélioration du dépistage et du traitement de l’hépatite C en prison: Enquête comparative entre 2000 et 2003

To determine the real frequency of hepatitis C (HCV) in French prisons.To evaluate the changes in HCV screening and therapeutic practices in prisons between 2000 and 2003 by comparing results of mail surveys of prison medical units both years (* if p<0.01).88 units (51%) responded to both surveys. In 2003, HCV serologic screening was routinely performed in 28% (36%* in 2000) of prisons and routinely offered in 66% (35%*). Mean HCV prevalence was 6.9% in 2003 and 6.7% in 2003. There were 534 liver biopsies in 2003 and 545 in 2003, that is, an average of 6 biopsies per unit per year both years. Treatment was provided to 297 patients in 2003 and 164 in 2000, but 29% of prisons offered no treatment in 2003, and 44% (*) in 2000. Overall 14% of HCV-infected prisoners received therapy.The prisons participating in this study and the inmates they include were representative of the French prison population. HCV prevalence in French prisons appears stable. Routinely suggested or conducted screening is widespread. The number of liver biopsies is stable but low, and the number of patients receiving treatment has increased significantly.

Prevalence of mental disorders in French prisons for men

BackgroundPsychiatric surveys conducted in prison populations find high prevalence rates, but diagnoses may be difficult in this particular context. None of these surveys have been conducted in France.Methods800 incarcerated male were sampled at random. Each prisoner was interviewed by a group of 2 clinicians, at least one of them being a senior psychiatrist. One of the clinicians used a structured clinical interview which generated DSM IV diagnosis (MINI plus); the second completed the procedure with an open clinical interview.ResultsPrevalence rates for a diagnosis given independently by both clinicians and for a consensual diagnosis were respectively: 3.8% (6.2%) for schizophrenia, 17.9% (24%) for major depressive disorder, 12.0% (17.7%) for generalized anxiety and 10.8% (14.6%) for drug dependence.ConclusionPsychiatric diagnosis can be difficult to interpret in prison, especially using traditional standardized interviews. The approach proposed here, with good reliability and closer to a day-to-day clinical practice, yields high prevalence rates.

“Race” Relations and Discrimination in Prison

This article focuses on race relations and discrimination in prison, and is based on data gathered from a large comparative project on populations of Muslim background in French and British prisons. For a meaningful comparison of discrimination in France and Britain, it is important to take stock of the discrepancy between societal and political contexts in the two countries. The first part of the article reviews the history of responses to legislation regarding race relations in the Prison Service of England and Wales, paying special attention to incidents that elicited public concern and to the effects of this history on the position of minority faith groups in prisons. The views of Prison Officers and of Muslim prisoners about the state of race relations in the prisons of England and Wales form the second part of the article. Finally, the article considers reports from Muslim prisoners in French prisons about their experiences of racist discrimination. This article concentrates on empirical results, which make part of a larger project.

Music for the End of Time (review)

Reviewed by: Music for the End of Time Hope Morrison Bryant, Jen Music for the End of Time; illus. by Beth Peck. Eerdmans, 200532p ISBN 0-8028-5229-7$17.00 Ad Gr. 4-7 Based on the real-life story of French composer Olivier Messiaen, Bryant's illustrated [End Page 171] biography chronicles how it came to be that a French prisoner of the Nazis was allowed to compose and perform his Quartet for the End of Time for an audience of over 5,000 at the Gorlitz prison camp. Messiaen arrives at the prison camp with a bag full of music clutched to his chest; as luck would have it, a compassionate German officer becomes aware of his interest in music and not only allows Messiaen to work on his compositions but provides him with a small room, a piano, a cello, and other musicians. The four members of the quartet rehearse in the washroom for many months before their debut performance in January of 1941. This is a fascinating story that unfortunately fails to flesh out some of its key descriptions. Although an appended author's note describes the factual occurrence on which the story is based, there are not enough details in the narrative to allow the reader to suspend disbelief over the unusual freedoms that Messiaen was allowed. Further, the plot lacks tension—from the beginning Messiaen is allowed to compose, and he eventually performs his piece without encountering any obstacles along the way. Peck's charcoal and pastel illustrations boast broad strokes and thick lines; while some details are muddied, there is a sense of fluidity in her compositions that matches the topic of musical composition. Those seeking historical information will be disappointed, but young readers interested in music may find hope in this tale of an artist's struggle. Copyright © 2005 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

An intimate alliance: The joint struggle of General Edward Spears and Riad al-Sulh to oust France from Lebanon, 1942 – 1944

Lebanon celebrates its independence from France on 22 November. On this date, in 1943, its president, Beshara al-Khuri, and prime minister, Riad al-Sulh, were released from a French prison. That ev...

When Worlds Collide: The Fate of Canadian and French Prisoners Taken at Fort Niagara, 1759

The treatment of French and Canadian captives taken in the battle of La Belle Famille and the consequent surrender of Fort Niagara, in July 1759, reveals the interplay of Amerindian, Canadian, British colonial, and British military values. The Iroquois negotiated separately with Sir William Johnson, the shape-shifting commander of the victors, to keep a number of prisoners taken in battle and destined for adoption or sacrifice. The British colonies of New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut initially received all the other prisoners from the surrendered garrison, and promptly hired them out to earn their keep. The British Army belatedly applied that they could of the humane new Anglo-French Convention of Sluis, calling for very different treatment of prisoners. The results were bizarre in several respects and, though occurring after years of bloody frontier war, were surprisingly humane even concerning Canadian troupes de la marine officers who were notorious for what would now be called “human rights violations.”

Disability in French Prisons: How Does the Situation Differ from That of the General Population?

Disability in French Prisons: How Does the Situation Differ from That of the General Population?

Mike Jay, The air loom gang: the strange and true story of James Tilly Matthews and his visionary madness, London and New York, Bantam Press, 2003, pp. xiv, 306, illus, £12.99 (hardback 0-593-04997-7); £7.99 (paperback 0-553-81485-0).

For a man who spent much of his life incarcerated in English asylums and French prisons, James Tilly Matthews enjoyed a remarkable and varied career. A sometime tea-merchant, peace activist, secret agent, draughtsman, mesmerized pawn, lunatic and self-styled “Omni-Imperious Arch-Grand-Arch Emperor Supreme”, he is now better remembered as a psychiatric exemplar: joining Freud's Dora, Judge Schreber, Sally Beauchamp and Mary Barnes in the addled pantheon of representative case histories on which psychiatrists and historians draw in their arguments over the nature of illness and politics of diagnosis. Yet in Matthews' case, the academic co-option of his troubled life does, for once, seem oddly appropriate. As Mike Jay shows in this brilliant historical account, Matthews' biography can be characterized as a struggle for self-determination within the competing philosophical schemes and political agendas of Hanoverian England. Matthews is now remembered as a prototypical schizophrenic. A philosophical radical and follower of the eminent Welsh republican, David Williams, he had devoted his energies to preventing the threatened war between England and revolutionary France. His mission would end in disaster. A self-elected intermediary, he was imprisoned by the Jacobins as an English spy. Freed after three and a half years, he returned to London only to find himself reincarcerated within the walls of Bethlem. Matthews recognized the source of his misfortunes. At each step of his sorry progress, he had been frustrated by the secret machinations of the “Air Loom”: a mesmeric mechanism which could control action and thought. Words would suddenly fail him. Sympathetic audiences would abruptly lose interest. Politicians, who must have known the details of his peace mission, were mysteriously rendered ignorant. His struggle for peace and self expression was subverted by invisible forces, with agendas quite different to his own. Clandestine mesmerists were not the only group interested in conscripting Tilly Matthews. At Bethlem, he fell under the control of James Haslam, an ambitious apothecary determined to establish his reputation within the nascent discipline of psychological medicine. Theirs was to be an unhappy relationship. Haslam was harassed by Matthews' wife, who, over the course of a decade, repeatedly raised his detention with Bethlem's governors and issued a writ of habeas corpus against the asylum. Believing that his professional authority was being impugned in these proceedings, Haslam responded with a detailed history of Matthews' delusions: Illustrations of madness: exhibiting a singular case of insanity and a no less remarkable difference in medical opinion: … with a description of the tortures experienced by bomb-bursting, lobster-cracking and lengthening the brain (1810). It was the first book-length study of an individual's madness published in England. If Bethlem had been intended to silence Matthews, its staff would end up preserving his voice. Haslam might have wanted to convict Matthews out his own mouth but, as Jay demonstrates in his penetrating analysis of Illustrations, many other readings are possible. “It is a book that cannot simply be read: but demands to be hijacked” Jay writes, and as Haslam had forced new meanings from Matthews' life, Jay reveals the unintended significance of the Illustrations. Jay takes the description of the air loom, not simply as a deranged fantasy, but as a metaphor for the individual's loss of agency within an asylum system bent on breaking the patient's will upon the physician's reason. If Matthews had been a pawn in the mesmerists' scheme, so too was he used by Haslam to advance his own medical agenda. Yet he was never entirely defeated. From his cell he would draw up new plans for Bethlem, which would later be incorporated in the rebuilding of the asylum. From his deathbed, his description of his forced detention would inspire the Parliamentary Select Committee's investigations into the asylum, investigations that would wreck the career Haslam had so ruthlessly pursued. It is a salutary lesson for those who would give a voice to the mad, whether mesmerists, psychiatrists or historians. Such work demands the same kind of sympathy and insight as Jay demonstrates in his riveting account of The air loom gang.

When Worlds Collide: The Fate of Canadian and French Prisoners Taken at Fort Niagara, 1759

The treatment of French and Canadian captives taken in the battle of La Belle Famille and the consequent surrender of Fort Niagara, in July 1759, reveals the interplay of Amerindian, Canadian, British colonial, and British military values. The Iroquois negotiated separately with Sir William Johnson, the shape-shifting commander of the victors, to keep a number of prisoners taken in battle and destined for adoption or sacrifice. The British colonies of New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut initially received all the other prisoners from the surrendered garrison, and promptly hired them out to earn their keep. The British Army belatedly applied that they could of the humane new Anglo-French Convention of Sluis, calling for very different treatment of prisoners. The results were bizarre in several respects and, though occurring after years of bloody frontier war, were surprisingly humane even concerning Canadian troupes de la marine officers who were notorious for what would now be called “human rights violations.”

Napoleon's Lost Legions: French Prisoners of War in Britain, 1803–1814

AbstractDuring the Napoleonic Wars, over 100,000 French prisoners of war were held captive in Britain. These prisoners remain a marginal group in the military history of the period, yet they represent a key turning point in the history of European prisoners of war, and their predicament offers insights into the nature of the French Revolution. This article considers the treatment and experiences of French prisoners, and in particular seeks to understand the circumstances surrounding their long‐term captivity. Unlike eighteenth‐century prisoners of war, prisoners of the Napoleonic Wars remained captive for the duration of the conflict, unable to return home through the traditional means of prisoner exchange or officer parole. This radical departure from the past gave rise to the modern practice of interning prisoners of war for the entire duration of a war. This historic shift was, on the one level, a result of the actions of one man – Napoleon Bonaparte. Yet, as this article highlights, it must also be understood as part of the long‐term social and cultural legacy of the French Revolution.

French prisons: une humiliation pour la République?

In France in recent years, the spotlight has been on the state of French prisons. The incarceration of well‐known figures who have chosen to publish details of the conditions of their detention, and prison doctor Véronique Vasseur's revelations about the Paris prison La Santé shocked the nation, forcing politicians to act. Two major reports by the Assemblée nationale and Senate concluded that France's prisons were une humiliation pour la République. But the grande loi pénitentiaire envisaged by Jospin did not come to fruition. Several reports later (on non‐custodial sentences, prison work and prison suicides), will the massive prison‐building campaign aimed at tackling the overcrowding at the source of the crisis be the only solution implemented? The article commences with a brief historical overview of the origins of the French prison system, outlining the evolution in attitudes towards incarceration. We then review the state of France's prisons today and examine recent attempts at prison reform.

Topology of a media prison

The French prison world was during the 1st semester 2000 under media’s spotlights. Relations between press and penitential administration are biased in the one hand by economic competition, in the other hand by corporatist inertia. Hence one can not access to a full knowledge of what prison is in France. Communication focuses on prison but forgets its user: the detainee. Influence of stereotypes on prison, added to the normative function played by the total institution, impose a stigma on the detained individual.

Prisonniers de guerre français et polonais : fraternité, expériences, témoignages

French War Prisonners and Polish People : Brotherhood, Experiences, Testimonies In 1940, a significant number of French prisoners got in touch with Polish soldiers, themselves prisoners, or with Polish civilians with whom they mixed in the 'kommandos' to which scores of them were dispersed. Those forced encounters influenced the way the two nationalises perceived each other, and the spiritual brotherhood, born under arms, lasted after the defeat. With the advance of the Soviet army, French and Polish prisoners had shared common experience. If the stories of the ex-KG returning to France were ignored, contained or scorned owing to the political and social strength of the French Communist Party, the fact remains, nevertheless, that this moment of shared history Polish and French provided a basis for the profound sympathy that links the two nations.

A aberração carcerária à moda francesa

An analysis of the French prison system's ebullience since 2001 shows that to use incarceration as a social vacuum cleaner in order to rid society of the dregs resulting from the economic transformations of neoliberalism is in fact an aberration. Not only do French crimes rates fail to justify the boom in the country's prison population, but comparative criminology confirms that there is no correlation between the incarceration rate and the crime rate. Automatic recourse to confinement in order to quash urban disorder is a remedy that nearly always aggravates the ill it is supposed to cure. It reinforces economic marginalization, social alienation, and the convicts' feeling of injustice, since prisons disproportionately affect the economically and culturally most vulnerable social categories. It is unrealistic to treat misdemeanors with such a gross and ineffective instrument as imprisonment, and it is urgent to reconnect the discussion on delinquency to the broad social issue of this century that this discussion conceals: the emergence of de-socialized wage-earners, the social insecurity vector, and material and mental deterioration.

Kropotkin between Lamarck and Darwin: The impossible synthesis

Prince P.A. Kropotkin (1842-1921) was the most important leader of revolutionary anarchism of his generation. He was also a respected explorer, geographer, and wrote a variety of books on the French Revolution, prison systems and Russian literature. However, he is better known for his contribution to the debate on Social Darwinism, exemplified by his book Mutual Aid. A Factor Evolution (1902). Actually, Kropotkin was trying to build his own brand of evolutionary Ethics: a complete socio-biology consistent with revolutionary goals. But there was a serious obstacle. The presence of the Malthusian population laws at the very core of Darwinism blocked any potential progress in this direction. Kropotkin tried to extirpate the Malthusian sting by making a critical analysis of natural selection and proposing a synthesis between Lamarck and Darwin in the 1910s. The aim of this article is to study the basics of the argument deployed by Kropotkin. It has been paid especial attention to the criticisms addressed to the hard heredity theory of August Weismann, and the reasons why Kropotkin&rsquo;s contribution in this field has been ignored.

High Mortality Rates Among Inmates During the Year Following Their Discharge from a French Prison

While the poor health status of prisoners has been highlighted in Western countries, the surveillance of their mortality has been neglected. We studied the mortality of 1305 prisoners released during 1997 from a French prison. Vital status after release was obtained for 86.4% of them. Compared with the general population, ex-prisoners non-natural mortality rates were significantly increased both in the 15-34 and 35-54 age categories (3.5-fold and 10.6-fold respectively) and the risk of death due to overdose was 124 and 274 times higher in the same categories respectively. Prevention and care should be reinforced in the pre-release period without waiting more epidemiological data.

Marking the Carceral Boundary

Based on comparative fieldwork conducted in and around four French prisons in 1990-94, this article analyzes processes at work in the `sensitive perimeter' that surrounds and isolates establishments of penal confinement. The first part retraces the nested dynamics of relegation at the planning and building stage that lead to the geographic isolation of carceral establishments - their expurgation from city centers and removal to distant locations devoid of economic and symbolic value. The second part focuses on the distortions induced by carceral divisions in ordinary interactions taking place in the bars and hotels located in the immediate vicinity of prisons. It is found that the dichotomous cleavage effected and materialized by the prison, with inmates embodying `evil' on one side and guards as carriers of `good' on the other, seeps through the walls and infects a wide range of social relationships. The prison both radiates and exports the penal stigma it is assumed to contain, thereby profoundly affecting its proximate social ecology.

Carceral Impoverishment

This article draws on a year-long field study of and indepth interviews with inmates in seven French prisons conducted in 1993-4 to map out their penal trajectory and to show how the prisons operate not only to temporarily hide but also to produce and to consolidate situations of poverty. From initial entry, orientation, and internal transfers to furloughs and liberation, every stage in the carceral cursus contributes to the progressive and cumulative impoverishment of those inmates who are the most deprived of economic and cultural capital. Far from being a homogenizing force, imprisonment deepens inequality along a class gradient by accentuating pre-existing deprivations in the economic, material, physical, relational, cultural and affective realms. Not only do the poor go to prison more readily, but once behind walls they are also subjected to much more rigorous and deleterious conditions of detention and they come out of penal confinement with greater difficulty. It is argued that carceral impoverishment is the result of the unquestioned primacy granted to the imperative of security in the organization and routine functioning of the prison.