Grids, anti-helicopter nets, watchtowers… like all French remand prisons, Villepinte prison (Seine-Saint-Denis) is supposed to be a fortress. However, nothing stops what prison jargon calls “projections”, these illicit packages sent from the outside over the perimeter walls. To approach it as closely as possible, the “launchers” do not hesitate to cut the fence in places. They would be paid an average of 100 euros per throw, whether or not the package arrives at its destination.
“Special Envoy” followed a Local Support and Control Team (ELAC) in one of its many tasks: picking up the “projections” of the night. Like every day, they number in the dozens. Some fell next to one of the exercise yards. The floor is strewn with rubbish – a tactic by the inmates, it seems, to hide the parcels which they will then retrieve with the help of homemade fishing rods.
Trash to hide packages
Among the projections, plastic bottles that contain “A little bit of everything“, summarizes an agent. “Often it’s just alcohol, he explains. But once they are ‘flared’, it goes quickly in inter.” Understand “intervention”, especially in the event of a fight between prisoners.
The bales contain alcohol, chichas, and above all mobile phones and chargers… but also, sometimes, less harmless items. That day, the scanner reveals the presence of knives in a package. There are four of them, about twenty centimeters. Something to worry the supervisor: “A prisoner who has this in his hand when you open a cell, me, personally, I’m not kidding.“Management is immediately alerted. Knife attacks on prison staff are rare, but traumatic.
Excerpt from “Prison: life behind bars”, a report to see in “Special Envoy” on June 23, 2022.
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