Our very first Geographics video was about a Russian prison, Pyatak, made famous by its
remote location and by the regime of isolation to which its inmates are sentenced.
In today’s Geographics, we will explore another prison, which in a way is the radical
opposite of Pyatak.
This correctional facility is located in one of the most densely populated districts of
a great European capital.
Its residents are unlikely to complain about being left alone … if anything, overpopulation
is more of a problem.
So, welcome, or should I say Bienvenues to La Santé Prison in Paris, France.
A Model Prison La Santé prison is located in the popular
district of Montparnasse, Paris, in the 14th arrondissement.
The exact address is 42, Rue de La Santé and you can easily get there with the Métro
nr 6.
The stop is Saint-Jacques.
A quick look at the map of the prison surroundings reveals how tightly it’s nestled into the
urban and social fabric of Montparnasse.
It is surprising to see a prison with a high security block at walking distance from tourist
attractions like the Paris Observatory, Montparnasse Cemetery or the Catacombs.
If you cross the road bordering the Southern wall of La Santé, you will stumble upon a
nursery (!), the Jean Dolent school.
That is the ultimate contrast between the harshness of a correctional facility, surrounded
by the normality of city life: on a school day, the laughter of children can be heard
alongside the rowdy screams of the convicts.
Also nearby, you can find a hospital, from which the prison took its name.
In fact, Santé means ‘health’ in French.
This is somewhat ironic: as we will see later today, poor healthcare and sanitary conditions
are one of the recurring problems at La Santé.
But when the prison was first founded, it was celebrated as a model institution, a clean
and modern correctional facility.
La Santé opened for business in 1867, during the reign of Emperor Napoleon III.
It was acclaimed as ‘The best and most beautiful prison in Europe’
By writer and photographer Maxine Du Camp.
The structure was designed by architect Joseph Auguste Émile Vaudremer, who was famous mainly
for his churches, his masterpiece being St-Pierre-De-Montrouge, which also in Paris.
The prison was developed along a perimeter resembling a truncated triangle, or a trapeze,
stretched out along its vertical axis.
The broadest side of the trapeze encloses an X-shaped building with a hexagonal structure
at its intersection.
The ‘arms’ of the X are the main ‘divisions’ designed to host up to 1400 convicts, while
the hexagon was the command centre for the prison guards.
This type of design is Vaudremer’s own take on the ‘Panopticon, a prison concept developed
by British philosopher Jeremy Bentham.
The key idea was to house convicts around a radial structure, with the guards at its
centre being able to constantly keep them under their watchful eye.
One of the divisions, nr 3, was designated as ‘High security’, although this designation
was later extended to a 6th division, located in a separate building.
Just outside the 3rd division, there stood a small courtyard, nicknamed ‘Le Fromage’,
divided into small triangular wedges.
Each wedge is intended as an exercise yard for the convicts, but as you can see from
this photo [Editing note: see image 5 out of 9 of this
album] … chronic overcrowding made it almost impossible
to even move around!
Throughout its 152 years, La Santé Prison has served the main function of housing alleged
and convicted criminals, both before and after their trials.
For a long stretch of time, the penitentiary was also the setting for executions by guillotine.
Until 1939, the capital punishment was performed in full view of the public, in Rue de La Santé,
just outside the prison walls.
Since then, authorities preferred to execute death sentences inside La Santé: the last
death sentence in all France was carried out here, in 1972.
French authorities were not the only ones to make use of the prison and its handy contraption
with a falling blade.
Following the invasion of France in June 1940, German occupation authorities requisitioned
La Santé to use it as a detention facility for members of the resistance movement.
A side note about rules of engagement between occupying Armies and resistance movements
during WWII: in general, regular Armies did not recognise partisans and resistance members
as regular combatants, and as such they did not subject them to regular PoW treatment,
as sanctioned by the Geneva convention.
These ‘irregular’ fighters were considered instead as ‘bandits’ -- in other words,
criminals -- meaning they could be targeted by violent reprisals and summary justice.
That explains why French partisans were subject to a particular harsh treatment by the Gestapo
and the SS within the walls of La Santé.
On the July 14, 1944, French National Day and a few weeks after D-Day, the partisans
held at La Santé reached boiling point: they staged a large revolt and attempted a mass
escape, only to be brutally quashed by the French collaborationist militia.
Fortunately, it would take only five more weeks before Paris and its prison were liberated
by the Allies, on the 19th of August.
Since the start of the occupation, 28 resistance fighters and political prisoners had been
executed at La Santé by firing squad or guillotine.
VIP – Very Important Prisoners La Santé has always been a high-profile prison
in France, mainly due to its location, but most of all because of the many VIPs – Very
Important Prisoners – which have been ‘welcomed’ as its guests.
For the most part, a prison is just a setting; what makes it stand out in history is the
cast of characters that animate its walls.
In the case of La Santé, these ‘actors’ included not only your run-of-the-mill career
criminals, but also literary and political personalities.
Let’s begin with … The criminal poet
I expect our first VIP was never seen doing pullups in the exercise yard, nor tattooing
his knuckles, but I may be wrong: his name was Guillaume Apollinaire, a celebrated poet,
writer, and all-round intellectual.
Born in 1880 and dead by 1918, Apollinaire was good friends with Pablo Picasso and was
credited as a founder of the Surrealist movement in literature.
Literary fame and respect from the intelligentsia did not spare him a shocking accusation: art
theft.
But let’s proceed in order.
On the August 22, 1911, an amateur painter noticed something was missing at the Louvre
… that something was the Mona Lisa, arguably the World’s most famous painting.
Desperate for clues and suspects, Parisian police grilled one Joseph Gery Pieret, a well-known
art thief.
Pieret was innocent, but he confessed to stealing two small ancient Iberian statues from the
Louvre, which he had sold to one of the most famous painters in Europe: Pablo Picasso.
Moreover, Pieret had been previously employed by Apollinaire as a personal secretary.
This sounds like a very flimsy case, but prosecutors thought that there was enough of a connection
to charge the two avant-garde artists: Cubists and Surrealists were famous for their antics,
so they would be perfectly capable of stealing Leonardo’s masterpiece!
Other ‘evidence’, with a huge helping of air quotes, included the fact that both
the poet and the painter were living in France at the time; and that Picasso loved art.
How can you argue with iron-clad logic like that?!
Picasso confessed to buying the stolen statuettes and got off the hook very early on, but Apollinaire
was held on trial for a longer period.
As he awaited his hearing, he spent time at La Santé.
Apparently no more than six days, after which he was completely cleared of any charge.
I expect the experience must have added to his street cred as a non-conformist and innovative
poet.
The poetic criminal A writer who did not need to boost his bad
boy credentials was novelist, poet, and playwright Jean Genet, acclaimed as one of the founders
of the Theatre of the Absurd.
Born in Paris in 1910, Genet had a rough life from the get go: born illegitimate and abandoned
by his mother at an early age, young Jean began a life of crime at the age of 10.
In and out of correctional facilities, Jean Genet spent most of the 1930s travelling across
Europe: he was a tramp, a pick pocket, and, occassionally, a sex worker.
In 1942, Genet wrote his first novel, Our Lady of the Flowers, while detained at the
Fresnes prison.
In 1943 Genet was incarcerated again, this time at La Santé.
During this stint, the author wrote Miracle of the Rose.
The novel was inspired by his own memories of life in prison, including accounts of sexual
relationships with fellow inmates.
His novels attracted the attention of French literary heavy weights, such as Jean Cocteau
or existentialist power couple Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre.
Despite critical acclaim, Genet continued to rack up convictions for theft, reaching
the tenth one in 1948.
According to French law, he could risk life imprisonment if he was convicted for an 11th
time, even for just stealing a loaf of bread.
In an unprecedented move, Sartre and Beauvoir appealed to the President of the Republic
and obtained a unique ‘pardon in advance’ for Genet.
The Future President A President can pardon, but a President can
also serve time.
A Very Important Prisoner, who later became a Very Important Person, or actually the Most
Important Person in his country, was Ahmed Ben Bellah, the first President of an independent
Algeria, in power from from September 1962 to June 1965.
After the end of WWII, the French establishment fought a long, hard and bitter conflict against
the Algerian independence movements.
The Algerians were defending their right to self-determination, in the context of widespread
decolonisation, while France would not let go of Algeria.
The North African country had not the status of a standard colony, like Morocco or Tunisia,
but was considered to be an integral part of France’s metropolitan territory.
Ahmed Ben Bellah was one of the top leaders of the independence movement.
His first clandestine group, the Organisation Speciale, was founded in 1947.
By 1949, it had already been crushed.
But in 1954 Ben Bella went back to the well with another group, co-founding the National
Liberation Front, or FLN, their mission statement being
“The only negotiation is war” The FLN launched a seven-year conflict against
French authorities, both in Algeria and in France, not shying away from terror attacks
on civilians.
Two years into this war, in September 1956, French security services apprehended Ben Bellah
on an airplane flying to Tunis.
Ahmed Ben Bellah spent the next six years locked up at La Santé.
He was placed in the block known as 6th Division, reserved for the most dangerous criminals,
who were subject to a high surveillance status.
During the first three years there, Ben Bellah and other FLN members were in virtual complete
isolation, allowed only a few hours a week in the open air, which he spent playing football
by himself in a small courtyard.
In a later interview, the independence leader explained how he had to share his block with
prisoners destined to be guillotined.
The intent to intimidate him was clear: “I saw the guillotine from my cell”
Eventually Ben Bellah was released in March 1962, after the agreements negotiated at Evian,
Switzerland put an end to the Algerian conflict.
The Jackal Let’s take a look at some professional,
hardened criminals.
I haven’t checked every single file of every single inmate, but this guy probably racked
up one of the longest criminal records among the prison population.
I am talking about international terrorist and hitman Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, better known
as Carlos, or ‘The Jackal’.
Ilich was born on October 12, 1949 in Caracas, from a Venezuelan upper-class family.
Influenced by his father’s Marxist leanings, Ilich enrolled at the Patrice Lumumba university
in Moscow, but was expelled in 1970.
Desperately seeking for a revolutionary cause to serve, Ilich joined the Popular Front for
the Liberation of Palestine, PFLP, where he took on the battle name ‘Carlos’.
From 1973 to 1975, Carlos became one of the most prolific terrorists in Europe.
In December 1973, he seriously wounded the President of department store chain Marks
& Spencer.
In September 1974, he joined the terror group Japanese Red Army in the occupation of the
French Embassy in The Hague, killing two by-standers with a hand grenade.
In June 1975, after two failed rocket attacks against Israeli passenger flights, the Jackal
was almost arrested in his Paris apartment, but he shot his way out, killing two police
officers.
A manhunt was launched, but with no results.
The Jackal even managed to organise his masterpiece in December of the same year: the kidnapping
of 42 officials at an OPEC meeting in Vienna, which he then ransomed to the Algerian government
for tens of millions of dollars.
The Palestinians disavowed him, as he was meant to execute two of those hostages, not
make millions out of the whole affair!
Carlos went solo, creating his own terrorist group, but mainly acting as a hitman for different
clients, including Muhammar Gaddafi or even the Stasi, the East German secret police.
His wife and accomplice Magdalena Kopp was arrested in 1982, which triggered him to launch
a violent reprisal against the French government, with a wave of bombing attacks.
As the Cold War thawed, Carlos lost the protection of his friends beyond the Iron Curtain and
was eventually forced to remain inactive for the rest of the 1980s and early 1990s.
Following rumours that Saddam Hussein was looking to recruit the Jackal, French secret
services finally located him in Sudan and arrested him in 1994.
Since then, Carlos has gone under trial three times, in 1997, 2011 and 2014.
In all three cases he has been found guilty of murder and sentenced to a total of three
life sentences.
Great escapes A prison drama is not complete without stories
of daring escape attempts.
The first dangerous convict to successfully flee La Santé was Jacques Mesrine, who still
enjoys a legendary status among French gangsters and the general public.
This was cemented by his own autobiographical books, Instinct of Death and Guilty of Being
Innocent, as well as by a two-part biopic starring Vincent Cassel.
Born into a middle-class family, Mesrine served as a paratrooper in the Algerian conflict,
allegedly killing in cold blood independence fighters after their arrest and interrogation.
After his discharge from the army in 1959, Jacques entered a life of crime: initially
as a militant within the OAS – Organisation de l’Armée Sécrete, or Organisation of
the Secret Army.
This was a right-wing organisation who violently opposed any concessions by the French government
to Algerian self-rule.
Throughout the 1960s, Mesrine drifted away from the OAS and even tried leading a honest
life, but the thrill of action was impossible to resist.
After committing a string of armed robberies and kidnappings in France and Canada, he was
eventually locked up in a high security prison in Quebec.
He escaped in 1972 and terrorised Canadian banks with a local accomplice.
The two criminals managed to rob two separate banks within 10 minutes of each other, and
held up the same bank twice in three days.
While on the run, Mesrine killed two forest guards and wounded two policemen while trying
to break back into his old prison, to free another accomplice.
After returning to France, Mesrine continued his robbing spree and finally achieved national
celebrity status in March 1973: following another arrest, he escaped the courthouse
by holding a judge hostage.
This is when the press dubbed him “Public Enemy Nr 1”.
The hunt was on.
As with any good villain, Mesrine could boast a nemesis: commissaire Robert Broussard, who
arrested him in September of 1973.
Mesrine spent the next five years inside the 6th division of La Santé, a time in which
he took a leaf from Jean Genet’s book and wrote his own books, starting with ‘Instinct
of Death’.
He also cultivated his own image, releasing several interviews in which he painted himself
as a modern Robin Hood, bent on a private war against the banking system.
He also took the occasion to criticise the poor conditions of convicts held at La Santé.
In 1977 Mesrine and accomplice Jacques Dessé dared the impossible: breaking out from La
Sante.
Their plan was basic, but effective: they held two prison guards hostage, stole their
uniforms and managed to walk out undetected.
Mesrine time on the run did not last long, though.
Commissaire Broussard hounded the bandit, and his squad finally closed in on their prey
in September of 1977.
Mesrine was surrounded by police while driving in Rue de Clignancourt, Paris.
It is debated whether the police were aiming for a quiet arrest or going in for the kill.
Whatever the intentions, the consequences were a massive shootout.
At the end, Jacques Mesrine lay dead.
He was shot 17 times.
In contrast, a prison break with a less violent outcome was Michel Vaujour’s escape.
Vaujour was one of the most successful bank robbers in France.
In 1983, he finally ran out of luck and was arrested for yet another hold up.
After a quick trial, he was sentenced to serve 18 years at La Santé.
Michel did not languish alone and forgotten in the Parisian prison, as he received frequent
visits from his wife Nadine.
During those first months behind bars, Nadine had picked up a peculiar hobby; every weekend,
she took lessons on how to pilot a helicopter and soon became proficient at flying an Aerospatiale
Alouette II.
Had the prison wardens known about this hobby, they may have locked Michel in solitary confinement.
On the May 26, 1986, the whirr of a propeller filled the air above the exercise yard at
La Sante.
It was, of course, Nadine, aboard her Alouette.
When the chopper landed on the roof of the prison, Michel made a dash for it and jumped
on board.
The guards could only gape in amazement at the scene, as husband and wife were flying
free.
I wondered if they picked up the kid from school on the way out of town?
La Santé in Bad Health Public enemy Nr 1 Jacques Mesrine had already
criticised the poor sanitary conditions of La Sante through his many interviews.
In 2000, Dr Véronique Vasseur, the prison’s Chief Medical Officer, published a damning
report along the same lines.
Her findings raised serious concerns on both the physical and mental health of the inmates.
One of the main issues was overcrowding, a problem common to most detention facilities
across the world.
La Santé had been designed to house a maximum of 1400 men, but at the time of the report,
the prison population numbered 2300.
Unsurprisingly, cramped cells and restricted, twice-a-week shower access led to outbreak
of skin infections and other communicable diseases.
The generally poor sanitary conditions also fostered rat infestations.
Convicts often stuffed their clothes into cracks in the walls to keep the rodents at
bay.
Another natural consequence of piling up criminals into a restricted space is violence.
Physical, psychological and sexual violence have always been ripe amongst convicts and
guards alike.
Prisoners organised in gangs are at an advantage, dominating over those who are isolated or
physically weaker.
A common destiny among the latter is to become virtual slaves to the stronger convicts.
Depression and suicide were also commonplace -- 124 inmates committed suicide in 1999 alone,
one of the highest rates among European penitentiaries.
By comparison, the US State of California has an inmate population of about 160,000
during the same year, but only saw 24 suicides.
And then there is sexual violence.
As we learned from Genet’s novels, consensual relationships among inmates were common, but
too often sex took a dark turn, and rape was widespread.
Dr Vasseur describes the case of a 21 year old man who was raped by his two older cell
mates in his first night at La Santé.
The young man contracted AIDS as a result.
These cases are a sad reality for many prisons worldwide, but what was disturbing about La
Santé was the occurence of prison guards raping convicts.
French prison authorities were slow in taking action to fix La Santé, considering its special
status as a prison under the spotlight of the news and popular media.
Eventually, in 2014, La Santé closed its gates to allow for a massive refurbishment
project, intended to fix its longstanding structural issues.
If you ever took on renovation work at your place, you know these things always go over
time and over budget, as you deal with contractors who are very skilled at sucking teeth and
mumbling ‘that is going to cost you extra, mate’.
So you can only imagine why it took five years before the iconic prison re-opened for business.
La Santé Aujourd’hui La Santé was re-inaugurated on the 7th of
January, 2019, and the authorities have delivered several improvements.
All 800 newly refurbished cells have been equipped with showers, refrigerators, hot
plates and landlines.
Half of the cells will be reserved for single occupancy, while the other half will sleep
two men, for a total of 1150 to 1200 convicts.
Two new sections have been opened: a unit dedicated to the most vulnerable prisoners,
and a new, high-security area for Islamist radicals.
The security measures have also been improved; for example, the prison now features a frequency
jammer, intended to disrupt mobile phone communications for convicts.
Unfortunately, this has also caused issues for the residents of Montparnasse, whose phone
calls have been affected, too.
While they may somewhat enjoy the presence of such a historical landmark on their doorstep,
neighbouring associations have filed a number of complaints for disturbance of the peace.
According to Germaine, a resident of 60 years: "In the evening, it's hellish, the convicts
make a fire of God's fire.
What is appalling is that there is no curtains and we see them naked!”
I really hope you enjoyed today’s video, before I leave a couple of questions for you:
would you rather serve time in the overcrowded and violent La Santé or in the frozen hell
of isolation that is Pyatak?
I also barely scratched the surface of many interesting characters today, so how about
picking your favourite for a future Biographics video?