French prison officers have blockaded dozens of prisons after new attacks by inmates increased fears for wardens’ safety.
The justice minister, Nicole Belloubet, was holding a crisis meeting with union leaders on Monday afternoon as industrial action by increasingly angry prison staff entered a second week.
Strikers had called for a “total blockade” of the country’s 188 prisons from 6am on Monday until the government met their demands for increased safety and wages. Around two-thirds of French jails were said to have been affected by protests, with 35 of them reportedly blockaded.
At the high-security Fleury-Mérogis prison outside Paris – Europe’s biggest jail, with 4,300 inmates – about 150 wardens blocked the entrance with barricades of tyres and wooden palettes.
Last week protesting wardens at Fleury-Mérogis clashed with riot police who fired teargas at the picket lines to force their way through.
At other prisons, guards downed their keys on Monday, refusing to work. Officials said police and gendarmes had been sent in to ensure prison security. Riot police were sent to certain prisons to break the blockade and disperse protesters.
The president, Emmanuel Macron, has promised to unveil a “global prison reform” by the end of next month, but official pledges have failed to reassure prison staff.
At the weekend an inmate at a jail in northern France attacked two guards with a metal table leg. It was the latest in a series of assaults against prison staff.
Yannick Lefebvre, a spokesman for the Ufap-Unsa union, which represents the majority of prison staff, said violence against warders was now a “daily thing”. “This is once again an attack on the staff we cannot stand it any more,” he said.
On Friday in Corsica, three prisoners, including one under surveillance for suspected Islamic radicalisation, attacked two guards with a knife, injuring one seriously.
The prison protests were sparked after a German convict and former al-Qaida militant attacked three officers with scissors and a razor blade at a high security prison in northern France.
On Sunday, again in northern France, dozens of inmates at two prisons refused to return to their cells after their afternoon exercise.
France’s prison service employs around 28,000 guards in 188 jails holding around 7,000 prisoners. Many prisons are severely overcrowded.
For more read the full of article at The Guardian
