French Prisons At Record Capacity As over 72,000 Behind Bars

The number of inmates in French prisons has reached a record high as of October of this year with 72,350 people behind bars as the prison population continues to surge.

The French prison population has seen a major surge since a low point of 58,109 inmates in June of 2020 during the early months of the Chinese coronavirus pandemic and has grown by around 24.5 per cent in just over two years.

The number of prisoners in September alone rose by 681, while October appeared to see around 200 new inmates in the French prison system every week, the newspaper Le Monde reports.

The large prison population has led to overcrowding in many prisons across the country and around 2,053 inmates are forced to sleep on mattresses on the floor as there are not enough beds to go around.

According to the French Ministry of Justice, only 41 per cent of the 72,350 inmates have their own cell and around 20,000 reside in prisons that are operating at 150 per cent of their normal capacity. Some prisons, such as Bordeaux-Gradignan prison, are operating at over 200 per cent capacity.

In 2017, the French government commenced a programme to construct another 15,000 prison places across the country but the work is not expected to be finished until at least 2027, with just 2,500 places expected to be ready next year.

In recent years France has seen a surge in some forms of serious crimes that require lengthy prison terms, such as murder.

A report from February of last year revealed that within the span of just twenty years the French homicide rate had doubled, with one criminologist calling the trend an “epidemic.”

Criminologist Alain Bauer compared the rising French homicide rates with the United States saying, “While we are rightly moved by the crisis of mass murders and violence that is returning to the United States, a similar movement that is not very visible, but more and more pronounced, is affecting France.”

Migration has also played a factor in crime, with French Presiden Emmanuel Macron admitting last week that at least half of the delinquency that takes place in Paris can be attributed to illegal immigrants.

Follow Chris Tomlinson on Twitter at @TomlinsonCJ or email at ctomlinson(at)breitbart.com.