France’s prisons are edging closer to a breaking point, with one of the country’s main prison guard unions calling for strike action to force what it says are long-overdue reforms.
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The UFAP–UNSA union announced on Monday that staff across dozens of facilities could walk out in protest at chronic overcrowding and a deepening staffing crisis – two issues that have been steadily intensifying for months.
Officials working inside prisons, from frontline guards to senior directors, have repeatedly warned that conditions are deteriorating fast.
Those concerns were amplified in January when the Council of Europe issued a stark assessment, criticising French prisons as overcrowded and often unsanitary, and cautioning they risk becoming little more than “human warehouses”.
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Overcrowding reaches new highs
The numbers underline the scale of the challenge. As of 1 March, France’s prison occupancy rate stood at over 137 percent, with 87,126 inmates housed in facilities designed for fewer than 63,500. It places France among the worst-performing countries in Europe – behind only Slovenia and Cyprus, both of which operate on a far smaller scale.
What is particularly striking is the pace at which the situation is worsening. The prison population is currently rising by around 200 inmates each week. Without swift intervention, the symbolic threshold of 90,000 prisoners could be breached in the near future.
For staff and inmates alike, the consequences are becoming harder to ignore. Overcrowded cells, many of them poorly insulated, are fuelling concerns about rising tensions, particularly as temperatures climb during the summer months.
The continued use of mattresses on cell floors – nearly 7,000 cases recorded in early March – has become a symbol of the system’s strain.
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Staffing gaps add to pressure
Alongside overcrowding, unions point to a persistent lack of personnel as a critical weakness. UFAP–UNSA estimates that around 5,000 prison officer positions remain unfilled nationwide, leaving existing staff overstretched and struggling to maintain safe conditions.
The planned strike could affect around 80 prisons out of just under 190 across the country. However, not all unions are on board. FO Justice, the largest organisation representing correctional officers, has opted not to join the action for now, arguing that it is “too early” to take such steps.
Details of the disruption are expected to vary from site to site. Measures under consideration include halting prisoner transfers, tightening screening procedures, and cancelling visits – steps that would significantly disrupt the day-to-day functioning of the prison network.
The government, for its part, is working on a draft law intended to tackle overcrowding. Among the proposals is a commitment to end the use of floor mattresses, though no clear timetable has been given for when the legislation might be introduced or adopted.
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Proposed ‘regulation mechanism’
Justice Minister Gérald Darmanin has already ruled out one controversial option – a prison regulation mechanism used in countries such as Germany, where new admissions must be balanced by releases once capacity limits are reached.
Instead, the Ministry of Justice is focusing on expanding capacity, with plans to create 3,000 additional places in modular prison units, half of them by 2027. Yet progress has been slow: fewer than a third of the 15,000 new prison spaces promised under a national plan launched in 2018 have so far been delivered.
There have been some incremental developments. Darmanin recently welcomed an increase in the deportation of foreign prisoners through conditional releases and bilateral agreements. But unions and prison officials stress that such measures affect only a small fraction of inmates and are unlikely to make a meaningful dent in the broader crisis.
(With newswires)
