Darmanin announces the creation of a high security prison in Guyana – Liberation

The Keeper of the Seals Gérald Darmanin announced this Saturday, May 17, the opening by 2028 of a high security prison 500 places in Saint-Laurent-du-Maroni, in the midst of the Guyana jungle, which will welcome the detainees sentenced to the heaviest sentences for drug trafficking as well as radicalized detainees. “I decided to set up in Guyana the third high security prison in France. Sixty places, an extremely strict prison regime, and an objective: to put out of harm to harm the most dangerous profiles of drug trafficking ”, told the JDD The Minister of Justice during a trip to Guyana. « Fifteen places » will also be « Dedicated to Islamists /radicalized ”, confirmed his cabinet to AFP.

“My strategy is simple: to hit the organized crime at all levels. Here, at the start of the drug path. In mainland France, by neutralizing network heads. And until consumers. This prison will be a lock in the war against narcotrafic ”, added the minister.

The Keeper of the Seals, who made the Fight against drug trafficking his priority, hopes that this prison « Serve to sustainably ward off the Narcotrafic network heads » insofar as « They can no longer have any contact with their criminal sectors ».

According to the JDD, The building permit of this building located on a plot of several tens of hectares in the Amazon jungle and at a cost of 400 million euros is on the way to being signed by the prefect. Saint-Laurent-du-Maroni is the strategic crossroads of « Mules » Coming in particular from Brazil which every day attempts to embark for Orly airport with, in their luggage or in their stomach, cocaine from neighboring souname, on the other bank of the river. It is also the old port of entrance to the prison where the convicts came from metropolis, from 1850 to 1938.

In January, the Minister of Justice had already announced his desire to isolate by the summer in the summer « One hundred larger narcotrafiaries » In « A high security prison », Previously emptied of its detainees, in order to prevent them from continuing their criminal activity from their cell. The most criminogenic department of France in proportion to its population, Guyana experienced a year 2023 record in terms of homicides, with 20.6 killed per 100,000 inhabitants, when the national average was 1.5 per 100,000 inhabitants.