00:00You can now bring in Clémence Bouchard, Head of Research and Publication at Prison Insider.
00:05Good afternoon. Thank you for joining us on the program today.
00:08Can you tell us a little bit about the La Santé prison complex where the former French president is now incarcerated?
00:17Yeah, so maybe so about La Santé prison, it's in Paris, as you said just before.
00:23It's a remand prison, so it's a facility that welcomes people to waiting trial, so presumably innocent, or those who are sentenced to short-term prison.
00:38And he will be, and you said that before, but he will be in solitary confinement.
00:44So it's a measure that has been taken to ensure his safety.
00:49He will therefore be alone in his cell, and the objective is for him to avoid interaction with the other imprisoned people,
01:01and he will have a bed, he will have a shower, he will have a desk, and phone with numbers validated by the prison administration.
01:09And since he is placed in solitary confinement, he will not participate in the collective activities within the prison,
01:17and he will have his one-hour walk each day alone, and not with the other people in this prison, as is usually the case.
01:28So you said that this facility is for people who are awaiting an appeal.
01:33The French president, because, the former French president, rather, because of his high-profile nature,
01:39is going to be in solitary confinement.
01:41So what exactly is solitary confinement?
01:43Does he have privacy?
01:47Yeah, he has privacy, and the objective of solitary confinement, but it's not a punitive sentence.
01:55The objective here is to basically, his protection.
02:01So he is not, he will not be in contact with the other prisoners, he will not have, as I was saying,
02:09the activities with them, and it's not the case, usually.
02:14He will, for instance, be alone in his cell, and it's usually not the case.
02:20The prisons in France are getting worse and worse in terms of over-coding.
02:25So, often, two or three people share one cell, and with one of them being forced to sleep on a mattress on the floor,
02:33just next to the toilet, basically.
02:35But it would not be the case here, because he will be alone, again, in his cell to ensure his protection,
02:41and he will not be part of the activities, but he will have the same rights as the other people in prison.
02:52So he will be able to call his family, he will be able to have visits each week.
03:00It would be the same for that, but, yeah, he will be alone in his cell and would not be in contact with the other people in prison.
03:10How do these visits work?
03:12Do the visitors come to his prison cell, or do they go to another room and meet with the former president?
03:18How is that going to work?
03:19No, it's not in the cell. It's like in a collective cell, or in a cell, not in a cell, but a room.
03:27It's like a collective room, and sometimes it's just a room for one or two people, depending on the situation.
03:33But it's always outside the cell, never in the cell of the person,
03:38because families don't have access to that corridor in the facility.
03:44I know that they said that they're going to keep Nicolas Sarkozy away from the other prisoners for his safety,
03:52but will other prisoners get to see the former president, even from a distance?
03:59No, the objective is to avoid that.
04:02That's why he's in the solitary confinement corridor.
04:06The objective is to avoid him being filmed or being taken in photos or that kind of thing.
04:15So it's really the objective to not have that kind of publicity or communication.
04:20And we know that it's always a possibility, but I think all the measures have been taken to avoid that, basically.
04:28And Clémence, very briefly, the French Justice Minister, Jérôme Darmanais,
04:31is supposed to be visiting the prison facility today.
04:33What exactly do you think he'll be doing?
04:36Oh, it's a good question.
04:39I think it's the job of the Ministry of Justice and the Ministry of Justice to visit prisoners,
04:48but we know that it's rarely the case, but they can't do it, as well as the Member of Parliament, for instance.
04:54So it's a bit difficult for us to say what he's going to do or what he's not going to do.
05:00But I think it's quite interesting because he will be able to see also the situation of prisons,
05:07because we know that the situation in prison right now is very poor,
05:11and the situation is quite terrible in a lot of facilities.
05:14So I think it can be a good opportunity to see the real lives of people in prison,
05:20to see the overcrowding, to see the proper system of access to health or access to activities.
05:26We'll be getting a check on how prisons in France do stack up later on in the programme.
05:31Thank you so much for joining us, Clermont Bouchard there.
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