"Is it surprising that prisons resemble
factories, schools, barracks, hospitals,
which all resemble prisons?"
Michel Foucault,
"Discipline and Punishment". 1974
Nancy, at the start of the 2010s...
Charles llI prison is being knocked down.
it was the era,
the French prison system was changing.
All over France, historic
town centre prisons
were being knocked down
to move the prisoners on the
outskirts of towns.
40 years earlier,
Charles III prison had
already been at the heart
of another pivotal era in the history
of French prisons:
Between November 1971 and the end of 1972,
an unprecedented series of mutinies
blazed through French prisons.
Out of the 35 listed revolts,
two were to mark public opinion:
The first and most violent, took place
at the central prison in Toul,
North-East France,
at the start of December 1971.
The second and most striking,
broke out hardly a month later,
40 kms from Toul
at Charles llI prison in Nancy
on January 15th 1972
I came across 40 years old forgotten photos
and got interested in this story.
At the time my father was starting work
as a photographer for the local daily press.
He covered some of the story of the mutiny
at Nancy prison.
For the first time, prisoners started
collective movements,
taking control of their prisons,
went up on the prison roof with
uncovered faces
and expressed their demands
directly to the public.
To understand what happened
I needed to talk with those involved,
the prisoners
who were on the photos occupying
the roof of Charles III prison
on that said 15th of January.
Charles Hoffmann - nickname Jacky -
was 19 at the time.
He admitted to investigators
"with a lot of courage and honesty
that it was his idea to organise
a demonstration"
it's a revolt
a revolt against the deplorable conditions
we were living in, etc.
that's what the mutiny was all about.
Richard Bauer was 23.
He was one of the most active mutineers
and resisted right up to the final assault.
A mutiny?
We call ourselves mutineers, see?
Just like on a ship.
A mutiny happens in a prison or on a ship,
but it's the same thing.
Roberto Suso was 19.
On the morning of January 15th,
he took part in the movement
started by his childhood friend
Jacky Hoffmann.
We all agreed on one point:
"let's tear this building down!"
everyody agreed on that.
A former member of prison staff
offered to talk about the Toul mutiny:
Christian Payot was a prison guard at Toul
and was confronted with this revolt
which he said was
"a gut-wrenching experience"
They were claiming for a softer regime,
and the amazing thing was they were
asking it for guards as well!
First we had to understand
why these people ended up in prison,
on both sides of the bars
and get some background informations.
"Always a bit of freedom
then a lot of prison"
Yes that's right, I'm Charles Hoffman or "Jacky".
I come from Tomblaine
where my parents had a house,
not in a bad neighbourhood or anything.
I went to school untill 14 YO.
I left it the day i was 14.
I went to work in a furniture factory,
Malora in Tomblaine.
And well, I only stayed a week.
They wanted me to clean the toilets
and I refused!
Then I went back to working in bars in Nancy,
as a waiter.
I worked in a lot of bars like the "Café Foy"
on Stanislas Square,
the "Bar de la Meuse",
the "Cheval Blanc"
in Rue des Ponts at "La Cigogne",
That was when I getting a bit naughty,
hanging round with the wrong people and so on.
The first time I was sent down, I was 16.
- When you say the first time you were "sent down",
you mean sent to Charles llI prison?
- Charles III, yes that's right...
Well, I met a friend at the funfair,
who asked me for a pair of gloves.
I said "what do you want gloves for?"
and he said "we're going to steal a car".
For me it was impossible to steal a car!
So I was with them and that was it.
they stole this car,
a Renault 4L
we had fun in it all night long,
they put the car back
and me, next day I wanted to get the car again.
So I got caught and it was me
who got sent down!
So I did a four months stretch,
I came out and two weeks later
I was back in the jug!
People said inside:"Why do you steal 4Ls
rather than a Citroën DS?"
so I said "Well yeah, but there's an
anti-theft device on them!"
And they said "No, you just need a nail file
and you do this"
so when I came out I tried,
and it worked!
When I went to do my national service,
my parents told me...
Well I went a long time after, right?
Because I was in prison all the time
and my mother said:
"You've been called up for three days in Commercy,
take your gear, you're staying three days ".
I said: "I'm not staying three days,
I'll be back tonight".
I was called in to see an officer,
I don't know who, in an office
and he started off speaking politely,
so I told him frankly:
"Look you know I've just come out of prison,
I don't like being ordered around
and in the army I'll just end up in the cooler
because I'm not listening to anyone. "
"Oh don't be like that, no need to get excited"
he said.
When I saw he was talking to me like that
I calmed down a bit!
I said "yes"
and he said
"well I'm exempting you from service then. "
And the same evening they told me
"You have to wait, they'll give you your tickets!"
I didn't wait at all, I just went.
It was all the same:
3 month street-time, 4 month in the joint,
that kind of hard time,
till the day of the mutiny…
I was there.
I was born in the Saint-Epvre neighbourhood.
Well it was...
the worst neighbourhood in Nancy you might say.
They always had their eye on us,
the police were always around,
there were problems all the time.
Well I mean, I didn't ask to be born there.
My mother worked in that area too,
she was a cleaner right?
Well she did what she could
so we didn't go hungry.
As it was hard for her and I started
helping myself here and there,
I started doing silly things all over the place.
That's how it all started.
It was just small stuff,
nothing really important as I saw it.
Well I worked a bit,
I worked in the wallpaper place in Jarville
and at a printers...
But that didn't last long.
I never had enough cash and I saw that...
Forget it, the wages of fear didn't interest me.
And I had people around me...
I knew people and we never let each other down.
When something happened, well we all went together.
We shared the costs.
I was in the protests a bit in prison.
Overall I got involved quite a bit...
If something wasn't right,
I had to open my mouth about it.
And I'd try to set up a little group and...
get involved.
I'm from a Spanish family of political refugees.
I was born in France.
I went to school in France
until I was 14.
Then I had a bit of trouble with my parents
and they said
"If you don't like it, you know where the door is".
And so I left.
So I was out on the street,
homeless.
And I was helped by the night crowd
crooks, pimps, prostitutes
in the Place Saint Epvre
who welcomed me with open arms.
And one thing just led to another
with delinquency,
starting with little things
then stealing cars,
then burglary
and then of course prison.
But before that,
i had already been to a borstal
my parents had applied to a Juvenile's Judge
to get me into a borstal
and in the meantime
I'd gone to work as a cheese maker,
in the Jura region
and I was fine there
and then one fine day as there was a place free,
they came and put me in a borstal in Chenauves...
So I escaped from there the first time
and they caught me in Lyon.
They put me back in the centre,
I escaped a second time
and ended up in Marseille.
And of course there I committed some crimes
to support myself.
I tried to get on a boat
because all young people dream of going abroad.
But of course I was minor and had no papers
so no-one would take me on a boat.
So then it was more stealing
and more prison.
My life then was like that, a kind of social suicide...
Always a bit of freedom then a lot of prison.
I had a hard life.
I was considered a street kid,
I grew up on the streets.
When I was 14 I did my school certificate
which was just so you weren't totally good for nothing
as they said at the time.
And then I did the sort of job
a lot of people did in those days
apprentice butcher.
That was for 3 years,
from 6 a. m. till 8 p. m. just for food and lodgings.
So I used to keep saying to my boss:
"I want to be paid by the hour.
If I work an hour, I'd like an hour's pay".
So he'd just say "If you're not happy, you can just piss off".
So one day I said to him "I'm pissing off then".
When I got home, my mother said "you'll end up in prison"
because she thought I'd done something wrong...
you couldn't break off a contract!
That was what they used to say in 1958
to apprentices who didn't honour
a 3-year contract.
So I went to work in a breeze block company.
It was piece work, there were 4 of us
on each machine
and we had to do 500 panels
breeze blocks of about 20 x 20 x 40 cm.
We used to say we had to go 100 miles an hour
just to earn a living.
Well it was a job...
Even today when I think about that job,
work marked me for life,
work in the real sense.
I did all sort of jobs,
I did 189 quarter-years in all areas of work,
it was OK...
compared to breeze blocks it was a pure delight.
And then I just said to myself "I can't stay here…
I can't stay here, I've got to join up".
I went to Algeria for the war...
I did...
and sometimes I felt like saying "I can't stand this".
Because what I found in the parachute regiment,
it was a bit like in prison,
it was just violence.
When I got back from the Sahara,
as I'd been out of France for 3 years,
the leave time was 6 months.
So I enrolled in the police academy in Sens.
To do the training period.
But I only did the training right?
And then I saw an advert in the local paper,
it's a shame I don't still have it,
what an ad!
In 67/68,
it said that the prison authorities
were looking for guards and supervisors.
So I replied to the ad
with my mother who kept saying
"You got a job?"
And given the breeze block factory,
given Algeria,
given everywhere I'd been,
I said to myself,
I'm not going to lie to myself,
I said to myself "you're gonna get that job
because at least that's a profession where…
I'm sorry but that's a profession
where you do nothing all day".
And there was another thing I said to myself,
I said "In the army, there was always an excuse.
In the police training there was always an excuse.
And there, what I'm going to say might be a bit stupid
but what I said to myself was
"At least there I'll be working with people
who've committed crimes,
I didn't think miscarriages of justice
existed at the time.
I said to myself: "At least there, there's no excuses. "
There you are,
that's the mentality you pick up through
those kinds of experiences.
A "Group of Information about Prisons"
The Winter 72 rebels
were helped with communication
and supported by the GIP
the French Prison Information Group
The GIP was founded on February 8th 1971
by the sociologist Daniel Defert and his partner
the philosopher Michel Foucault.
It was the first militant organisation to get interested
in the situation in French prisons.
The aim was to get information out of prisons in secret
with the help of prisoners
to report on how things were,
and alert the public opinion.
The Prison Information Group came into being
in a context of mass imprisonment
of left-wing militants post-May 68
In this context the GIP became a recognized opponent
for the government.
The militants were put under surveillance
and regularly arrested.
Pleven was the Minister of Justice
and had to deal with the onslaught of the revolts.
Daniel Defert accepted to meet us at his home in Paris
to discuss the whole adventure of the Prison Information Group
and his close links with the winter 72 rebels.
It was pretty awesome to be able to investigate
the most closed off place possible,
inside prisons
and get the stories of prisoners out in secret.
MICHEL FOUCAULT ON RADIO-CANADA - APRIL 71
- This investigation you're running is almost clandestine right?
Not exactly clandestine but it is completely unofficial.
Our aim is not so much to get objective data
as to give the prisoners a means of expression.
To let them give their views for the first time ever I think.
But to let them speak surely you need
to work with the prison authorities?
- No, that's where what we're doing is a little clandestine,
we get help from some prisoners' families,
from some lawyers,
also help from people who work in prisons
like doctors, psychologists, etc.
even employees
and, well, we manage to pass questionnaires
on to prisoners
who can talk about their experiences
and what they are now demanding
and the prisoners are starting to send us texts spontaneously,
stories, fragments of autobiographies, diaries,
and in the next few days or weeks our intention is
to launch in France
a kind of little underground paper
in which we'll publish these prisoners' texts unedited
to give a say to all these people
who've sort of been excluded from any discussions
and not allowed a say.
- With all the documents you possess
lead you to the conclusion
that prisons in France are extremely archaic?
- Yes they are archaic, medieval...
I'm not even sure if there can be such
a thing as good prison.
I go by the principle that any form of repression
is a bad thing.
I also go by the principle that any State is repressive
and that leads me to conclude that all States are bad.
I remember there was a mother
whose children were in prison at Fleury Merogis
and every Saturday she went a long way
to see her sons inside
and she came back here to see Foucault
and give him snippets of information
from her sons about Fleury Merogis prison.
So the families had a real miltantism
and gradually we suggested methods
of political action to them
demonstrations, speaking at meetings,
a range of political actions which were unusual
in the context of what we call "common law"
Little by little as revolts broke out,
autonomous Prison Information Groups
were formed in the rest of France,
in Marseille, Toulouse, Lyon
or Nancy.
I was in the GIP, the Prison Information Group.
- What did you do? Did you tell your story?
- I went to two meetings in the meeting room,
the old Rex cinema.
We talked about prisons a lot, notes were taken etc.
The GIP published a total of 5 brochures
including a "books of prisoners' demands
following the recent revolts"
which included the demands of the rebels in Toul and Nancy.
There were 35 revolts
which were variously smaller,
some of which we found out about
in the authorities' archives,
the 35 revolts weren't in the papers
but when we read the authorities' archives
we found out there had been 35,
so we weren't in contact everywhere
but when it happened in a big town we could get involved.
Ah no, we had no rights,
they took everything away from us,
we had no freedom and no rights either.
We didn't have the right to say anything,
if we did it was straight into solitary confinement.
We had no contact with the outside,
for those who had visiting rooms
they had screens to talk through
and conversations were under surveillance.
We couldn't say anything even in letters
because the post was all censured,
we had no way of knowing what was going on outside
because there were no newspapers,
before the revolt there were no papers.
We had no board games,
no decks of cards.
To play cards, we made them out of cardboard,
we drew the symbols on
and whenever there was the slightest search,
they took them off us.
There was... nothing.
May 1945: the principles set out
by the French prison reform commission
– article 3 –
the treatment of prisoners,
not counting any corruptive overcrowding,
must be humane,
in no way humiliating
and should mainly be aimed
at improving prisoners'
general and professional education.
There's no law, the warden is the law.
That's it.
The warden is in charge.
If you write a letter to a magistrate
or a public prosecutor to complain or something,
it just gets sent to the warden.
If you criticized the authorities,
you get punished.
They say "you lied", you get punished
and that's it,
end of story.
No public prosecutor can be bothered.
"You were brutalized,
they did this or that to you?"
No, no, no.
That never happens.
First off they don't come to the prisons.
Or when they come
they don't come and see us,
they go and eat at the canteen
or have a drink with the warden,
no-one sees them.
I've never seen anyone
walk through the workshops
and say to me "I'm a prosecutor,
do you want to tell me anything?"
I've never seen one!
And I've spent as much time
inside as outside...
and I'll be 50 soon.
There are no rights, absolutely none...
you're here to be punished.
A prison is there to punish you,
it's not just to take your freedom away,
it's there to punish you.
You're kept there,
you're taught nothing,
you don't learn a profession or anything
and you come out the same as
when you went in,
or worse and that's it.
I was rebellious the whole time,
I was against them,
I wouldn't give in either,
I answered back etc
and so me, I got beaten up,
they used to hit me,
they'd just give you a smack in the mouth
for nothing at times,
you just had to shut up and take it.
You got a caution and the guard came
and took you straight to solitary.
In my time, solitary was an empty cell
with a mattress in there at nights.
In the daytime you had nothing
and well all day you got bored shitless,
you just went round in circles
or you wore yourself out…
You end up just lying down on the ground,
there really was nothing there.
and you couldn't close the windows
from the inside
just the outside.
So the guard closed them or not.
And in winter they left them open
and you just went blue with cold inside.
You couldn't close them right?
And if you did anything wrong,
they even came and stripped you naked in the cell.
Day or night.
And they sometimes even took
your mattress away at night.
And of course you only ate
once every two days.
Not every day.
Today you ate,
tomorrow you didn't.
Being hungry was just awful
in the evening it was spinach stew
or potatoes with a bowl of soup,
well the soup was transparent...
The bread was stale,
we never had fresh bread,
it was from the day before...
they used to store it on purpose,
it arrived fresh
it arrived fresh
but you got bread the day after
so you didn't get it fresh.
- How long have you been here?
- In this prison, 4 months.
- 4 months for a case with a car?
- Stealing a car, yeah.
- How old are you?
- I'm 20 and a bit.
- And you work in this workshop?
- Yes i do.
- You call this place the warming room?
- Yes. It's...
- And is there enough work for everyone?
- Well some work and others warm themselves
up round the stove..
- And they just wait?
- Well yeah...
- And everyone just waits...
- Well...
Work in prison...
you' re exploited
but if you've got no cash,
if no-one sends you any cash,
well you do it,
you work if it gets you a few pennies
so you can buy what you need.
There's never any unemployment,
never any strikes or anything
and the salaries are the same
as 20 years ago,
we never get a rise.
I reckon we work much more than outside
because we have to stay at our places.
You have to ask the guard to go to the toilet
during work,
the guard is on our backs all day.
You do assembly line work with no breaks
and if you don't work you get punished
for having a bad attitude
and you lose your job.
If you lose your job you starve in prison
because the little money you do earn
is just enough to survive in prison.
A prisoner is selfish but there's no choice,
the system makes him like it
because they always make him think
he can get some kind of reward
so he doesn't care about his neighbours,
he just tries to walk a straight line,
he needs to make money.
If he does something wrong, he's punished,
he loses his job
so he wants to keep his job
even if it's really badly paid
because it's better than nothing.
So they're self-centred,
they just look out for themselves.
And if there is a little group
who have some solidarity among themselves,
the authorities make sure to break the group up.
One gets put in one workshop,
another somewhere else
or worse, they get transferred to
other prisons.
CLAIRVAUX: SEPTEMBER 22nd 1971
CLAIRVAUX: SEPTEMBER 22nd 1971
the Buffet and Bontems case
One event was to light the blue touch paper
and trigger the first rebellions.
It took place in the Aube region
at the central prison in Clairvaux
on the night of the 22nd and 23rd September 1971
Claude Buffet was serving life for murder
and Roger Bontems was serving 20 years for armed assault.
They were sharing the same cell.
That night, Buffet & Bontems tried to escape.
They took a prison guard and a nurse hostage
and barricaded themselves into the prison sick bay.
In exchange for the hostages, they demanded
a vehicle and weapons
to get out of Clairvaux prison.
On September 22nd at 4 in the morning,
the police stormed the sick bay
but operation failed:
Buffet cut the throats of the nurse Nicole Comte
and the guard Guy Girardeau.
- They murdered my sister in law!
that's all she won!
They murdered her and she had two kids.
they ripped her.
Shame on justice,
and shame on Clairvaux's prison.
The "Clairvaux Drama" as the press headlines
called it caused public outrage
and a campaign in favour of the death penalty
for Buffet and Bontems
They woud become among the lattest
to be execuded in France
on November 26th 1972,
in Santé's prison yard.
But before the trial and execution,
the Buffet and Bontems affair
had immediate consequences:
the press and public opinion stigmatized
the prison population.
All prisoners were now seen as
potential Buffets and Bontems.
Inside prisons, prisoners were beaten up
for the slightest reason.
The prison authorities were getting revenge for Clairvaux
To appease angry prison guards,
on November 12th 1971 Pleven, the Justice Minister
voted in a law doing away with Christmas parcels
containing 5 kilos of food prepared by prisoners' families,
the only parcel allowed into prison
for the holiday period.
- We used to get 5 kilos of food
and they did away with that because of weapons
which might be hidden inside.
Because the parcel got opened in front of you
and a prisoner might jump on it straight away
if there was a weapon inside.
But I can't really talk about these
Christams parcels problems
cos I'd never had a Christmas parcel.
And in the end, Pleven's measure
aimed at pleasing the screws' unions
which did away with Christmas parcels
triggered the revolts you know about.
The protests against the end of Christmas parcels
started to spread though the prisons.
On November 25th
the prisoners in the 3rd division of
Fresnes prison began a hunger strike
On December 1st
all prisoners were on hunger strike
in the upper block of the Santé prison.
We organised a demonstration against
the end of Christmas parcels
on the Place Vendome in front of Pleven's office
and the revolts began at almost the same time
as our demonstration.
So that made the authorities think
everything was really coordinated
but within the GIP we couldn't order revolts
because we had no way of protecting people
and sometimes the level of repression
was absolutely dreadful.
The CRS riot police came in,
beat people till they bled
so we couldn't tell people to revolt,
we could just support them by spreading
information to public opinion
and it was very strong support
and there was an unhoped-for level of
communication from inside to outside.
That was what we wanted from the start,
we really hoped...
and in the end the revolts happened
but we could only hope they would,
we couldn't encourage that to happen,
we didn't have the means to protect them.
TOUL - DECEMBER 5th 1971
TOUL - DECEMBER 5th 1971
"the difference between promises... "
After starting his prison guard career
in the psychopathic block
of Hagenau prison in Alsace,
Christian Payot was transferred to
Ney prison in Toul in 1970
He found cold, brutal discipline there
instilled by Georges Galiana,
a prison warden who had had a reputation for torture
since the Algerian war
and had already caused an attempted revolt
in Nîmes prison in 1966
At the time, someone from that area
always used to come and ask me
if I'd like to transfer to Toul...
Well I always said "no,
I'm fine at the centre in Hagenau"
I was happy with my psychopaths.
And if I cheered them up a bit,
I had the impression I'd made someone ill
feel a bit better.
Because everything was fixed at Hagenau,
the guard nurses, one of them
had really been a nurse in the army
and he showed the others what to do...
so it was injections of tranquilisers all round…
sometimes they'd be putting
10 doses in the needle
and the other guy would say "Stop it! Stop it!"
I saw blokes with lockjaw because of the drugs.
So I asked for a transfer and the new warden said
"That's a shame because
I could have seen you as a nurse".
I don't know if I would have been capable of that...
So I was transferred and when I got to Toul,
Ney prison...
I go in and there was " the Gorilla", Bertrand...
He says to me:
"Where were you before?"
I said: "Well I was in the army,
I did the training course... "
And he said: "Well we'll see about that then...
its not Hagenau here"
And when I left Hagenau the other
warden warned me:
"At Toul, all the guards have been
transferred there,
they like discipline and they drink".
Well I found the guards were really like that,
guys who'd become totally
mindless disciplinarians...
They were afraid of losing their jobs
and most of them came from places like Bruley
or Lucey...
When I shook their hands,
they had farmers' hands...
When they held pens it was like
a sort of sleight of hand trick...
They had hands like grape-pickers,
rabbit breeders,
lumberjacks.
I think personally they were happy
to have that job
because they'd get a little pension
and a uniform.
But the system had made these blokes
completely mindless...
That's why I'm always a bit tolerant
of these people who applied discipline...
you can be a victim as well...
victim or unaware you've been trained that way.
We were brainwashed in a way...
Were we beneficiaries or victims?
At Toul, definitely with Galiana
under Galiana it was a reign of terror...
it was terror and we couldn't do anything else.
Galian is a crook, a sadist, an ex from Algeria war
The boss, he was the boss...
I can't find another word...
he was in charge...
he had to be in charge of everything,
know about everything,
make all the decisions...
But personally I saw him as a worthy,
respectable man
but not...
he didn't seem to have feeling,
I don't know if he really had any...
for him, prisoners were just prisoners...
it was...
that was what the warden said at Hagenau:
"There, they're all guilty, they're all guilty,
none of them is...
they're all gonna telll you... "
That was my only training.
Rebellion this morning at Toul central prison
in the Meurthe and Moselle region.
the prisoners have taken over the workshops
and lit a fire.
- For the third time in less than a week,
the prisoners at Toul central prison have mutinied.
This evening, Michel Pollaco, everything seems
to be back to normal.
- Out of the 532 prisoners, the older prisoners didn't revolt,
it was the younger ones
but what did they want?
A change of warden,
improvements to their conditions,
the Christmas packages affair
doesn't seem to have been the only reason...
the young guys in the young prisoners' block
were smashing up the whole building.
As they did welding, they'd made real flame-throwers.
Even the riot police would have been hurt.
They'd made a load of weapons,
pikes, because they had grindstones...
it was... unbelievable.
I would even like to have got some for myself
because I collected weapons at that time...
They'd turned blowtorches into flame-throwers,
unbelievable stuff.
The same day, Galiana was no longer in charge,
everyone reported straight to Pleven.
The demands of the prisoners at Toul are simples.
they demand the immediate departure
of Georges Galiana,
the prison warden.
So that went on all day and then
in the evening
an agreement was made.
So all these nice gentlemen, the MPs,
without Galiana,
went and told the prisoners:
"Go back up, there will be no sanctions".
The "Abbé" Velten, the prison priest,
was asked by the prisoners to act as mediator
with the authorities.
After long negotiations
the priest would announce to the press
the agreement
he thought he had obtained.
They had legitimate demands
which have been met.
The new warden is Mr. Divisia
who will be in charge of the prison
as long as is necessary.
One condition of the agreement is that of course
there will be no repressive measures
applied to the leaders of the rebellion.
The guvnor arrived about 2 in the morning
and said:
"We've come for the leaders".
He said: "Those with keys, go first
and open the doors".
And after the doors of the cells.
The bloke I was with asked me:
"Have we got keys?".
I said "wait 5 minutes"
The boss said:
"I'm not going to have to frisk you surely!"
The guards had all gone white,
one even said "I've got a wife and children"
you know, like in a film
To make the guards get the keys out,
the warden said: "Don't be scared,
the riot police will be right behind you".
And the boss had a list with all the names.
He went into a cell for eight:
"so-and-so, so-and-so, so-and-so,
move! Don't touch a thing! "
Not a picture, not a single thing.
"so-and-so, so-and-so... "
I don't know where he made them go...
and they destroyed everyone's stuff,
even photos, the most private stuff,
everything was destroyed.
So next morning, other prisoners
demonstrated at their windows
"you said there'd be no sanctions".
That's the difference between promises... and...
"a change of warden has never been in question"
So then they sent the riot police up,
to Gallery D to be exact,
ecause the prisoners had managed to smash the doors in
but couldn't get out of the Gallery.
And I was there,
it was me who opened the armoured door...
the riot police came up...
25 year-old blokes... some had gloves on...
some had rifles...
and in five minutes...
I saw the butt of a MAS36 rifle broken,
with hair and skin on the breech...
Sometimes i say to myself
"have they killed some of them?"
I picked up bodies, their feet were...
there were even prisoners who
called the guards from the watchtowers
saying "our guards, come and give us a hand!"
They'd just wanted to demonstrate
because they'd been promised
there would be no sanctions
and the leaders of the revolt had been taken away.
Well the Toul revolt happened in two stages:
There was the prison for adults, the older prisoners,
who were a bit more respectful,
things calmed down,
the warden made some promises he'd didn't keep
as usual
but they took their caps off and went back up.
But the young prisoners started a movement
which was nothing like the normal prison movements.
They'd been at the Sorbonne in 1968,
they'd staged a sit-in in the courtyard,
they totally refused to go back in
and spent the night discussing prison conditions.
So that was really another like a new era
in the politicization of prisons
and they were totally in collusion
with their generation.
Because of their support for the prisoners,
the priest Velten, the vicar Amedro
and doctor Edith Rose, the psychiatrist at Toul,
were all refused access to the prison
on the morning of the 12th of December.
"Abbé" Velen was accused of not having
warned the authorities
that the revolt was brewing at Toul
since the Clairvaux affair.
I didn't know what was happening
but I felt things were tense at the prison
so I told the warden personally on Friday December 3rd
that there was a danger at Toul of there
being problems like at Clairvaux.
So I DID warn him.
Doctor Edith Rose wrote an open letter
to President Pompidou
the days following the rebelliion.
Michel Foucault and Simone Signoret
paid for a full page
to publish this letter in "Le Monde"
dated December 26th 1971.
A public scandal about the use of the restraining belt
thus broke out.
Mrs. Rose, you are the psychiatrist at Toul prison
and you have just read the report
by the inquiry commission
on the events last month.
Had you been told about these restraining belts
by colleagues or nurses?
- Yes, the nurse used to complain to me
about people being restrained for a long time
and also several guards told me
they found it unbearable
to go and spoon-feed a man tied up for a week
and left in his own excrement.
I hope that after this sorry affair,
everyone will do ask questions of conscience
and that we can look at new methods
for help these unfortunate people readapt to life.
I didn't...
I took part in restraining people though.
They had these things to restrain people,
it wasn't handcuffs...
I don't know where on earth
they'd got them from,
from Cayenne or God knows where,
there was an iron bracelet
with a pin you had to screw,
a bit like a tin-opener to screw it...
The prisoner couldn't unscrew it.
So a kind guard would unlock a hand
so he could eat...
but if the prisoner had been locked up for 8 days...
it wasn't...
The kinder guard would say: "I don't mind unlocking your hand
so you can eat
but do you really think it’s a good idea
because after you're going to want
to go to the toilet?"
That was the kind of conversation you got.
What kind of regime have we got if priests
and psychiatrists have to keep quiet
about things like that?
It was really a world which dehumanizes everyone.
I didn't have a lot of time for people
who supported this outside the prison world
because they all knew and kept quiet
as if it was normal and acceptable.
So there were a load of
unbearable things going on,
Foucault called the GIP collection "Intolerable",
things that were tolerated in silence
by a large number of those involved
in the penal system,
justice, religion
and it still took the prisoners' anonymous revolt
for all that to come to light.
On the evening of January 13th,
the day the Toul report was published,
the flagship news show on ORTF TV,
"L'Actualité En Questions"
was devoted to the prison revolts
and the Toul report being published.
Jean-Marie Domenach represented
the Prison Information Group
but "unofficially" as his name was never given
by the presenter
- I would like to get concrete answers because...
What you're saying is very interesting,
the prison system can only work if there are men
to make it work,
is that right?
Well that actually surprises me.
A year ago wanting to investigate prisons
was a kind of crime
which actually personally got me arrested.
So I say, we journalists are here
to answer questions
but it's a bit embarrassing,
at least for me.
because if there'd been no revolt at Toul,
let's be honest, we wouldn't even be here.
So here's my question again,
I'm sorry, I have nice set answers
but they're rather vague
who is responsible?
A year ago no-one was because
everything was going well.
Now it's everyone's fault because in the prisons
it's all gone wrong.
So I'd like to ask a much simpler,
much more direct question.
How can it be that the Toul prison warden
was the man we know about,
with a very good assessment,
I'd like to see his marks by the way,
and basically my question is this:
Who is responsible for those responsible?
Because if it's not the men involved
and if we carry on putting men
in certain jobs,
everything we're saying here,
I'm sorry Public Prosecutor, Sir,
well all you're saying is will make no difference.
Domenach didn't know how right he was.
A few hours after this programme
on January 15th 1972 at dawn,
the revolt broke out at Charles llI prison
in Nancy.
NANCY - JANUARY 15th 1972
NANCY - JANUARY 15th 1972
"like a flock of birds taking flight"
We'd heard through transfered prisonners
or visitors
that there'd been revolts
I can't remember what order it was
but I remember there'd been Clairvaux and Toul.
AFTER TOUL... NANCY
Well this bloke Michel Magnier arrived
from Ecrouves prison
where there'd been some trouble.
So we were in this canteen and I said to him:
"Why did you all kick off at Ecrouves?"
I'd been in Ecrouves, it was individual cells,
it was clean and we had radios
which wasn't the case elsewhere.
So I said to him: "I've been there... "
and off we went talking about it
and I said: "Why did you riot at Ecrouves?"
And he replied: "What about here?
Look what it's like and no-one's reacted?"
I replied: "You're right,
it's filthy here, we eat like pigs etc
and no-one reacts. "
And then I said quite loud in the canteen:
"What can you do? Here no-one would react
if we ever tried something... "
And I heard a couple of blokes
in the canteen say: "Oh yeah?"
So I got up and I said:
"Well are you capable of rioting?
So why don't we have a mutiny
if that's the way it is?"
So I set a time and it was me
who started the mutiny
by saying to them: "Well look,
as you all see things that way,
we're all into it right?
So let's kick it off tomorrow. "
So we all got on the bed,
we hardly slept all night
and we got it organised.
The guards arrived the next day
to open up
and we'd got it all sorted out in advance...
Two of them turned up,
one was the physio,
I can still remember his name
and we told them "look, go away,
this is a mutiny".
And then we'd jumped on the benches,
on everything there was
and as there were stairs going down
to make a dead end
we threw everything down there
to block the way
and we thought we'd make our claims…
but it all took on amazing proportions,
we'd never have thought
things would go so far.
Because the prisoners downstairs,
they got the forge,
they smashed down the forge door
so we got hold of the sledgehammers...
then we ended up all over the prison
and that's how the riot began...
The mutiny in the morning was
when they served coffee,
coffee-time... at dawn.
they served cell-by-cell,
it just kicked off and there was
a rush of prisoners...
I didn't even get my coffee.
My door opened, a prisoner opened it for me.
My mate opened it and said:
"Come on Richard, let's go ".
But the screws had gone,
they'd got out of there.
They had no keys, they had nothing left.
Because if you think there was
two screws per landing
and there's ten prisoners jumping on them,
you know they just throw their keys away
and run for it.
So we picked up the keys and opened the doors.
And that happened floor by floor
and it went really quick...
I realised there was a revolt because of the noise
because normally everything was really calm,
it was like a graveyard,
just the noise of keys or the bars,
that's all you ever heard,
the sound of the bars...
But that day there were unusual noises,
breakfast was late which was unusual too
and then this kind of hubbub
which got louder and louder.
And as we heard banging everywhere,
unusual noises,
we started trying to smash down our dorm door,
it was dorm n°2
we managed it and after it was like...
opening all the doors we could open
so that everyone could take part
so there no-one would be innocent.
When we barricaded the door,
it was the big door between the cells
and downstairs.
We set up iron beds right up to the ceiling
so no-one could get in
and we occupied the roofs so no-one could get
into the prison...
We got access to everywhere,
all the doors started to be opened,
even the solitary cell doors.
That's how it all started,
it was like a flock of birds taking flight
and so we ended up on the roofs like…
We knew... yeah we knew were we going, see?
We made a hole on the second floor
and we all went up through it
and then we opened all the doors
on the other side
so that everyone could get up on the roof...
Imagine this old building with
traditional prison wall around it
and outside Alexandre 1er Square in Nancy,
the railway tracks,
a street where before the war people
used to watch executions
in the courtyard of Charles llI prison.
Well today this was the stage
for another prisoners' riot.
I saw the crowd in the square next to the prison,
people on our side who were
supporting us.
Who were even encouraging us.
So we went up and down all the time,
down to the kitchens to get stuff to eat...
It was a riot, the prison belonged to us.
We were in charge of it all…
I don't know if it was... exhilaration,
a bit of madness too,
it was fantastic, great.
Things followed on naturally
cos of everyone involved...
After that, the organisation...
We got up on the roof,
we sent the tiles flying
and well we were on the roof to protest,
to show things were bad!
And it had all got too much,
we got beaten up by the guards for nothing,
they used to hit us,
the food was disgusting,
we had no showers, hygiene...
Just everything!
Once again prisons are making the headlines.
This time the wave of protest spreading through
the French prison system
has reached Nancy prison,
Patrick Poivre D'Arvor.
- Yes, it all started at 7 am today when
the 300 prisoners in Nancy prison
right in the centre of town
mutinied and barricaded themselves
into one of the buildings of Charles llI prison.
Jean-Claude Gellin
who has been our on-the-spot correspondent in Nancy
since the start of this affair...
what is the current situation?
- Well the prisoners are still on the roof,
on that front nothing's changed
and so you could say it's the status quo.
Between the buses of CRS riot police
and the prisoners on the roof,
there's a no mans land of about 50 metres
where roof tiles have been thrown.
- Well, I suppose if anything changes,
we'll call back at 2 pm…
- Yes, I'll get in touch.
I remember the Nougat bars
they used to give us,
we put little notes in them,
I don't know if the journalists got them
but we wrote our demands like that
and tried to throw them.
We also saw the police picking them up though...
We threw quite a lot...
We made some banners saying
"WE'RE HUNGRY", exactly...
People didn't know what was going on inside,
how run-down the premises were etc.
we demand an ameloration of our daily-life
better food, decent hygiene, warming in winter
in all dormitories
we demand the end of press censureship
we want the prisoners not to be beaten
by guards anymore
Nancy's prison population - january 15th 1972
- Sir, about the prison issue...
- yeah?
- What's your opinion?
- I don't...
- You don't have an opinion?
- No, not all.
- You were at Charles llI
during the revolt I believe?
- I saw them, yes.
- You saw them and what were your thoughts
at that moment?
- I think that if they want to smash things up,
they should go somewhere else
or they shouldn't go into the prisons.
- That's your opinion?
- Exactly, yes.
- You would have been harder on them?
- Ah of course, yes,
I would have used a machine gun.
- You would have used a machine gun to shoot at them?
- Yes, yes, exactly!
- And that would have led to fifty or
a hundred deaths?
That would have led to dead prisoners
and everything would have been fine,
no more prisons!
Prisons have always been
like they are now you know,
in fact I think they're even better now
than before and well,
if the people inside don't like it,
well they shouldn't have gone in there...
that's the moral of the story for me.
- Ok, thank you.
You know, a bloke who's rebelling
who hears that,
he says to himself: "what the fuck is going on?
I'm not a criminal,
I'm just trying to defend my rights, that's all!
Sir, I believe you know Charles llI prison
in Nancy well
because you were in there... how long?
- A year.
- And how long ago did you come out?
-6 months.
- So what's it like inside that prison?
- Well inside the prison, it's really shitty.
- You get bread that's two weeks old.
You have a plastic bucket to shit in -
in front of everyone else.
And solitary confinement, well you
wouldn't believe it.
With day solitary, you've got no mattress,
no water, you get nothing.
- Well, do you approve the actions of
your former... comrades…
I mean... the prisoners who are currently
on the roof smashing everything up?
- Yes I do approve.
Because anyone who hasn't been in there
can't know what it's like
but someone who has been in
has a right to speak about...
And could I ask you
what you were convicted of?
- Me? For stealing.
I stole a scooter.
- And you manage to rehabilitate?
the roof tiles and then we fought,
we fought the CRS riot police.
The prisoners who were on the roof of the registry
threw me tiles which smashed
and I picked them up
and threw them at police cars
and the riot police,
those I could reach.
Yes the firemen out the front...
I even had some colleagues who threw
tiles at their heads...
they tried to drive us back but they failed...
Well the firemen went back down pretty quick
because I told them to,
I said "If you're a father, why do you deal with this?
you've got fucking nothing to do here?"
and they went back down,
they caused no trouble...
It was just the riot police who managed to...
really block what we were doing.
After four hours or so,
we were still on the roof.
I went down because of the helicopters,
I was one of the last up there.
I saw them throwing tear gas canisters,
that was why we came down.
And I remember, I can still see myself
going down the stairs
with the CRS opposite me,
guns turned round, I can't say...
the CRS didn't hit me...
Even with their guns lowered,
they made us came down
and if we hadn't done so,
they would surely have made us...
so looking at it like that,
we had to come down...
It was like Apocalypse Now, with helicopters,
it was like a guard of honour of guards,
an invasion,
with CRS taking over the roof,
they had their guns on us from high up on the roof...
So that was the end of the story.
They sent us choppers but...
things just calmed down.
It was just that when my friend
was hit by the grenade,
he nearly fell down the roof...
that was the end of the mutiny.
The two of us got hit,
Jacky Hoffmann and me
and he got put into detention.
Because he was badly hurt...
That was why the mutiny stopped,
otherwise we would have carried on.
We took him down,
then they put him on a stretcher...
or on a table... I can't really remember...
We wanted to carry on...
we thought we could hold on.
But they ended it by force...
Calm has returned this evening to a prison
that's been looted, destroyed,
with the roof almost ripped off,
Nancy prison.
The violent mutiny which broke out yesterday
and which was not unlike the riot at Toul
was subdued early this afternoon.
This morning, several dozens of prisoners
had begun smashing up inside the buildings
and invading everything on their path
and looting the canteen and the storeroom.
- Several of them were blind drunk when
the police arrived.
The justice minister Mr Pleven considered
the situation so serious
that he left Saint Brieuc to return early to Paris.
The justice minister also published a communiqué
saying that he considers the mutiny
was not caused by any serious discontent
and declares, and I quote, that
"certain subversive elements are trying
to manipulate the prisoners
to cause or stir up dangerous unrest in several prisons. "
At 3:30 this afternoon, the same communiqué
stated that
"the justice minister says that police forces
under the authority of the Home Secretary
and the Minister of Defence
have been ordered to assist
the prison authorities' staff
and provide all the means and firmness required
to oppose all attempts at subversion
in the prisons".
"the mutiny which broke out this morning
in Nancy
was not caused by any serious discontent".
- It is clear that
"certain subversive elements
are trying to manipulate the prisoners,
who are going to suffer from
the consequences,
to cause or stir up dangerous unrest
in several prisons. "
we knew nothing afterwards.
We had no newspapers, we had nothing,
After we got put into Toul,
they shoved us in there.
I stayed two days at Toul's prison,
then they took 4 or 5 of us
and transferred back to Nancy,
I said to myself:
"what's going on here then?"
Transferred to Nancy
and when we got back there
they really laid into us!
They actually gave us a guard of honour...
and not even the CRS,
they were in front of the cell doors,
everything was destroyed.
But there was like a guard of honour
of prison guards
I swear this is the truth,
I ended up naked, and I mean naked,
in the alley and they beat us up,
they gave us a kicking on the ground...
I ended up with my head like this
in solitary,
there were 4 or 5 blokes in clothes,
there was nothing else,
they'd just been thrown
in there like that...
And these blokes, after an hour
they saw I hadn't been given
my clothes back,
they started banging and shouting:
"give him his clothes back!"
It was shameful
and the warden, everyone knew,
no-one lifted a finger,
no-one said a word,
the guard of honour beating us up
when we go there...
for all that, they were real bastards.
And they knew full well we were right,
they knew why we mutinied.
What's more, I've talked with
former guards since
and they told me they though
we were right...
Old guards told me that,
they said "well it's not our place
to tell you were right
but it took all that to
get things to change. "
NANCY'S COURT - JUNE 8th 1972
NANCY'S COURT - JUNE 8th 1972
"a battle with blood, flesh and violence"
You no doubt remember
the unrest in several French prisons
at the end of last year and the start of this year,
1972.
This brought up the question of
the place and the role
of prisons in society on the whole
and as you may know the French government
is working on a reform of the prison regime.
In Nancy, 250 mostly young prisoners
at Charles llI prison in the town centre
revolted.
6 of them are in court today in Nancy.
A long police enquiry in Nancy
led to this choice
of the alleged leaders of mutiny,
those who decided the day before
to incite their fellow prisoners
to demonstrate.
They will be accused of causing
150 million old francs
of damage
and wounded 5 people,
3 police and 2 prisoners.
Well they had to make an example of us,
they were fed up with riots everywhere...
If they hadn't made an example of Nancy
it would have carried on elsewhere...
In any case, I didn't agree,
the plan was
when we came back from court,
if I was found guilty,
we would riot again
But it didn't happenned,
and we were transferred again the next day,
I ended up in Fresnes
But we wanted to riot again,
it was OK,
the day we went to court even,
we managed to start hunger strike.
We went on hunger strike,
not everyone joined in but some did.
But I'd said "if we're found guilty,
when we get back, we kick off again!
In other prisons
there were also hunger strikes in support
of the Nancy Six.
Outside the GIP was to pay close attention
to the Nancy prison affair.
In Paris, demonstrations are organized
under the the minister of justice's windows.
TOUL... NIMES... NANCY
Who's next?
TOUL - NANCY:
PLEVEN MURDERER
A member of the Nancy GIP was
to call out from the bridge
opposite the prison
to suggest that Jacky Hoffmann
asked Maître Henri Leclerc,
the top Parisian lawyer
to come to Nancy to defend
the six mutineers in court.
So I was downstairs when they gave me
my clothes back
and then 2 or 3 days after I heard
from Fusillés bridge,
solitary was downstairs,
I heard someone with a megaphone:
"to defend the prisoners, Maître... "
I managed to find out, Maître Henri Leclerc.
So that's how I came to write to him
and how he came to defend me.
I think the six young men wrote to me,
I think they were going on trial,
they chose me,
I went to meet them,
They choose me,
I got the permission to visit
and I went to see them in Nancy prison
while getting to know the case file.
And I found the case file quite shocking.
I can still see myself reading the file copy,
finding out the conditions
the mutiny took place in,
how it had been put down
and how they'd chosen the prisoners
to send to court.
I saw him twice in Nancy prison.
Before the judgement.
And after a visit I explained to him
while we were talking
that warden had taken off us...
I can't remember the exact amount now,
it was 500 or 600 francs
and he said "He had absolutely
no right to do that
as you are going to be tried ".
So I said "Oh yeah?"
So I asked for an appointment
with the warden
and said "Right, I've spoken to my lawyer,
Maître Henri Leclerc
and you don't have the right
to take money off me
because I'm going to court ".
And he banged his first on the table
and said
"Mr. Hoffmann, I'm in charge here,
not your lawyer".
Well I didn't argue because you couldn't,
I just went out but the same evening
I wrote to the lawyer.
I explained to him what the warden
had told me,
he replied that he would take care of it
and the warden paid me back.
And the others too.
So, everyone,
he gave the six ringleaders back
the money he'd taken.
And in prison I got a lot of letters
from people outside.
Students etc.
and even money
from people who helped
and supported me.
It was just so obvious
that the living conditions of those people
were dreadful,
that the causes of the revolt were
somehow natural
and that the police and the authorities
had lied in this case
that it became a combat for a principle,
a battle with blood, flesh and violence.
And that the problem of prisons
had to be dealt with.
Alongside of the political battle
I've just spoken about
there was also the battle for these people,
I mean I found myself in an ordinary trial situation
defending people who seemed to
have been the victim
of serious injustice.
It was one of the main trials of my life,
even if it only lasted an afternoon.
And the theory behind it
was that basically the prisoners were calm
but there were ringleaders.
This is a classic politicians' theory,
it's the theory that was used
against all the revolutionary movement,
whenever people died,
in major workers' movements,
union movements,
the Fourmies massacre or others,
each time the ringleaders were blamed.
The working class would be nice and docile
if there were no ringleaders.
And here accusing ringleaders was just absurd.
It's the army's technique but less serious.
We picked one in ten and that's it...
- Nancy's revolt in court -
WHY SIX PEOPLE ONLY?
Maître Leclerc, now the witnesses have all spoken,
we are moving on to the prosecution summing
up and your defence speech.
At this moment of the trial,
how do you feel about it?
There is one thought that comes to mind
you've said several times,
like your colleague Maître Naud
that the six accused men were not…
enough in number?
- Yes, Maître Naud and myself are convinced,
I think like everyone here,
that in reality they picked out 6 to accuse
and those 6 accused are to an extent
the scapegoats for the whole of
Nancy prison.
I don't know if the magistrates
will be convinced of that,
we haven't heard the prosecution
summing up yet
but definitely a certain number of prisoners
have come to court
to say that basically everyone
agreed to rebel
and that it was decided without ringleaders
and so it's hard to understand why
6 unfortunates
are here today,
they seem like the scapegoats
of Charles llI prison
and also scapegoats
for all the revolts in prisons
and it seems the idea is to make them pay
for the this revolt when the causes
are elsewhere.
When I spoke to Henri Leclerc he said
"listen,
I have a colleague who would agree to come... "
I think he had studied under Albert Naud...
- Yes, he was his mentor,
- That's it, he explained that to me,
he said "it'll be great" all that
so I accepted straight away
and I remember Albert Naud,
he was quite old then,
a little bloke
who came to the tribunal
and they made an excellent defence speech,
and they did that for all
six ringleaders.
And so the truth was told.
They said, I remember it well:
"be careful, in certain prisons
they're waiting for the verdict!"
The following have been convicted
for their role in the Nancy revolt:
Michel Magnier 20, machine setter,
Charles Hoffmann 20, unemployed,
Jean De Poux, 26, hairdresser,
Gilbert Villieres, 24, welder,
Gilbert Lapointe 23, painter and decorator,
Daniel Jaques, 23, boilermaker.
All bar one were in prison for robbery.
Well we had everything on our side
but we had to be convicted
and that was that.
I thought that this came
from much higher up,
that their intention was to
massacre those people.
And we ended up with what was considered
at the time,
by the journalists there, by those used to
the judicial system,
as a lenient verdict
which disgusted me obviously
but I knew that I wouldn't get them to
kneel down
and say "we were wrong, we were wrong. "
So in the end we didn't appeal
against the decision
because it seemed unwise to appeal.
We wanted to start protesting again,
to renew our arguments.
But I went to see these lads afterwards
and I told them: "it's absurd
to take such a risk...
Well, six months...
And yes, it's horrible to say it
but 6 months...
we're going to do the time".
NANCY'S TRIAL HAS BEEN THE TRIAL
OF FRENCH PRISON SYSTEM
But I think the Nancy rebels did...
Well they did bring about a reform...
an important reform of our prisons.
I think their combat brought about
the first major reforms
because when the combat was run
by Parisien intellectuals,
"bobos" or hipsters which no-one said then,
it had no chance.
When they were scared,
they realized what the prisons were like.
I have the impression that a man
like Pleven
didn't know what was going on in his prisons
and that it was only after this
that they investigated seriously.
It's thanks to the revolts in the prisons.
In all the prisons.
Thoses who managed to do something
to bring that change.
Not just in Nancy.
Nancy I kicked it off because I said:
"Why just the others?
Why couldn't we follow the example"?
Badinter abolishing death penalty
might not have been possible
if there hadn't been all that beforehand.
And that period of agitation
brought about a certain number of changes
but 40 years later I have to recognize that
they still weren't decisive.
an ongoing renewal
I'm much more on the side of the prisoners.
Because you have to recognize...
everywhere...
In the big strikes and all that,
that's what makes things progress.
what we did had done some good
because the prisons were more human,
the canteens had been distinctly improved,
there was more choice,
it was more human.
The guards as well, it was...
like day and night.
It had radically changed.
Those revolts did do some good, yeah.
Now I've got my children, my grandchildren,
I've changed
but... I'm still outraged when I see
the injustice that goes on.
Everything disgusts me, even at my age now.
I tell you, the last time I went back
must have been in 2003 or 2004.
So all the time I felt like revolting,
I'd had enough...
and working just to be exploited as we were
that didn't interest me any more.
Because I see a person who earns
1200€ a month,
what can he do with that?
It's a disgrace!
He pays his rent, he pays for this or that
and what's he got left to live on?
What kind of leisure can he have with that?
It really disgusts me.
What kind of future can on Dude
hope for?
Goin' back on assembly lines?
for 5 buck an hour?
He'll still be in the same shit
So in prison he will have learn new tricks,
more vice,
So when he'll get out, he'll get back to it.
he'll start over again.
And society is responsible for that.
They put you in jail, you get out,
it's even worse.
You're an outcast.
They make you feel how much your life
is a waste.
"Ah, you're an ex-prisoner? You did prison"?
You cannot get in anywhere,
all the doors get closed on you.
You can only go where you're
exploited to the max.
That's about it.
So prison really is...
Really is
The trashcan of our societies.
But the aspect...
I belive that prison should be a bit more human
and a bit more equal...
Because if you let...
I've been imprisoned myself
so i ask myself the question
You don't have to make someone suffer,
being deprived of freedom freedom,
being deprived of his relatives...
The mutinies are not all over.
It could happen there, in Nancy again
or Paris or anywhere.
It would just take something that's wrong
which adds fuel to the fire
and well the blokes won't hold back,
they'll mutiny again!
"failure"
A prisoner will always complain.
Fact. And this is normal.
It’s normal because he has been imprisoned,
and whether people say he wanted it,
he did something wrong, he deserved it
being deprived of freedom
is still an inhumane situation.
It’s a punishment, that’s how it is,
but it’s an inhumane situation,
it’s inhumane for someone to be
subjected to this.
So, shouldn’t prisons be humanised
to a certain degree?
It’s the way prisons are that is the failure.
This goes beyond the framework of
my interview,
but tough luck, that’s how prisons are.
I think prisons are unreformable,
basically that's the problem..
So there's nothing new without revolts
and there'll be revolts from time to time
because the prisons can't be reformed.
Hence, it needs to be understood.
It is essential to look at repression
in a different way,
and alternative sentences need to be
successfully implemented
within our system under different conditions.
It is, of course, necessary to create
social situations
which help to reduce crime,
but that’s a major problem.
The normal reaction of the individual
is to turn to repression.
The normal reaction is that someone
did something bad
therefore he/she must be punished.
And, as there really is no more serious
a punishment than prison,
we put them in prison.
Consequently, it is already down to public opinion.
If those who are in charge,
and who know the reasons,
and who know the situation
and who are competent
also say that prison is the answer,
public opinion proves significant.
And therefore, if we want to
improve the situation,
we must not only take meaningful measures,
unfortunately costly to some extent,
but we must also successfully
convince the public
that these measures are good.
But, what is worse, this is only
a smart penal policy
which will not immediately bear fruit.
In other words, directing a smart
penal policy,
a reversal of this zero-tolerance to crime attitude,
when all is said and done,
is not going to present immediate results.
We know well that, at times,
improvements have been made.
One of the biggest developments
which has stopped reoffending,
came at the end of the 19th century,
when a senator called Béranger invented
two things:
the suspended sentence, which didn’t exist before,
and probation.
This led to a decrease in criminal offences.
That’s a fact.
Those good after that were reintegrated.
But it’s a long-term policy
and it has to be courageous.
I don’t know whether the government
which is going to have significant
problems on their hands,
geopolitical problems, as well as
major economic problems,
and so on.
I don't know wether he
is going to have the courage
to face up to the public on a problem
such as this,
and yet it should do.
All that remains for us is to head down to
the coast, to Nice,
to talk with the former prisoner,
writer and political activist
Serge Livrozet.
Child of a prostitute mother and
an estranged father,
Livrozet leaves school at 13 years of age,
starts an apprenticeship as a plumber,
then becomes a burglar,
at first out of necessity,
then through conviction.
In Prison, Livrozet discovers
the work of Michel Foucault
with who he entered into correspondence.
Once out of Melun prison in late 1972
Livrozet and Foucault becomes close friends.
Together the two men go on to found
the Prisoners’ Action Committee,
a more radical imitator of
the Prison Information Group
brought by intellectuals which were
considered to be too unadventurous”
for Serge and his gang.
In 1973, Livrozet publishes his first book,
From Prison to Revolt.
Foucault signs the preface
and describes the books as
the powerful expression
of a certain popular belief
on law and illegality.
Today at 72 years of age,
Livorzet is no longer an activist.
He has finally left the hustle and bustle
of Paris behind him,
and he has chosen to reside in
the hills surrounding Nice.
It is there that he gave us this opportunity
to broaden the discussion on crime
as a means of survival in general,
the purpose of prison,
and to explain to us why he considers,
40 years down the line,
his militant struggle
and that of the prisoners from the 1970s
to be a failure.
The prison in itself hasn't changed.
Wether you'll put go-go girls on TV
or what not,
that won't change anything to imprisonment
What interests me is the reason why
we lock people in.
What's the fundamental reason behind it?
You don’t fit the mould at school,
you are a dissident.
You don’t fit the mould at work,
you are a dissident.
And at a given moment, there are some
that go further,
and who head for crime,
if you do so,
you are a hyper-dissident.
A subtle gradation like this exists.
But if you fit the mould, you will never
be mithered.
The problem is when you break the mould,
you know, you leave the straight and narrow,
you become a criminal.
And they have to be controlled
in another way
than they had been up to that point.
Hence, there are prisons.
And prisons have solitary confinement
in order to restrain those that
don’t conform to the prison rules.
And then you have craziness
well, if he thinks like that, he
must be crazy”..
And prison works like that.
It’s to make those that go to prison
feel guilty
so that they are completely responsible
and society plays no part.
Society will never dare to scrutinise itself.
Therefore, you ultimately need idiots like me
who get ideas into their heads,
believing that they can force society,
rather than the individual,
to accept the responsibility for food crime.
Later on when I became a criminal,
society would have hoped that
I would take the blame.
But, I never apologised.
Today, I’m 72 years old
and not for one second have I ever
regretted what I did.
Yet, I did it.
But I will never stop saying that
the right to legitimate defence for the poor
is about defending themselves against
the abuse from the rich.
Therefore, when I see a wealthy person,
if I’m broke, I’m going to rob him.
Because I believe that in order to be rich,
you have to have robbed.
We cannot be rich without having cheated,
deceived, stolen, or defrauded.
Therefore, I consider my delinquent acts,
ultimately criminal, because
I went to criminal court,
However, I never hurt anyone
when robbing them
because I did it during the night;
safes and things like that.
But to be a criminal, there are only three
aggravating circumstances
before you become a criminal.
I still believe, as I believed from
the moment I became a criminal
that it is legitimate to want…
Anarchists are not wrong when they say
individual reclamation”..
They don’t speak of theft, it’s reclamation.
I, myself, was never bothered with legality;
I was always concerned with legitimacy.
Legality is something which exudes from
a social class.
Legitimacy exudes from rational logic.
Do you regret the crimes
that you have committed?
- Do I regret the crimes that I’ve committed?
Well...
No, I genuinely don’t.
Michel Foucault, I’ve heard of him,
but he was not as well known as Sarte.
I say he’s good this guy”..
So the Prison Information Group,
for me in any case, who was in prison,
it was good.
It was amazing.
The Prison Information Group was for me...
a great means of evolving intellectually
because I was not at the stage that they were.
Obviously, as soon I as left,
I contacted Michel Foucault again,
the Prison Information Group was, for me a…
a distant relative.
So we had a meeting, other meetings,
we talked, blah blah blah,
we get on really well with Michel,
Defert was there...
and that's when I had the idea...
at the time of...
just after the revolts in fact:
I said to my buddies:
"The GIP is good
but it would be better to create
the CAP, the Prisoners' Committee for Action".
I'm getting a bit emotional because...
it makes me feel younger,
I'm getting emotional about myself.
I used to get myself really worked up back then,
you have to realize that at that time
I was planning to bring about revolution.
When we created the CAP,
the idea for me was to give direction
to prisoners' spontaneous revolts,
at that time there were 120,000 blokes
sent to prison per year.
I said to myself "120,000 blokes who are
brave enough to take on society
and who were beginning to follow
revolutionary principles,
it was a bit like the Hô Chi Min school
during the Vietnam war,
we were going to push them to...
120,000 people is a lot!"
The Prisoners' Committee for Action
has been going for two years
it has created a newspaper called the CAP
and we print 5000 copies.
We have precise goals
which have never been taken into consideration
which are: The abolition of criminal records,
which is the abolition of injunctions banning
convicted people from certain places.
The right to a minimum wage when we work,
a fair wage for a fair day's work.
And our other aim is to inform.
We are informing the population,
people in general,
unlike what you read in the mainstream press,
about the real conditions of detention
and the fact that what prisoners really are
is working class people,
95% of people in prison are working class.
That's a fact.
I can't remember which paper at the time,
either Aurore or Figaro,
well right-wing papers
had written
"Prisoners dare to demand paid holidays"
Hey you dumb fucker, we work 10, 15, 20 years
and we NEVER get paid holidays!
We're workers!
We don't have social security,
we don't have a work certificate when
we come out
because we were demanding that too.
That's what an ordinary worker demands!
The Prisoners' Committee for Action's slogan
was to say
"prisoners' chains are the same as any other people
who have no influence over their own lives,
they're just more visible. "
It's an advantage!
Because when you've got chains on
at least you can physically see them!
But what about when you're chained up
psychologically?
It still makes me sad, you see,
because I've got away from my
working class condition
and I'm still sad because
without wanting to criticize the workers
because I'm a former worker
but you can't get away from the fact,
unless you're blinkered like a horse
so you don't look to the sides.
It makes me emotional because I feel sad
for these people who aren't lucid about their lives
and actually go along with their
own imprisonment in the end,
either through traditions or through sport
or through doing silly dances or religions,
the Gods all that,
it's all there to make them mindless,
it's not their fault but...
but it makes me sad for them
because... nothing will ever change.
Because I say to myself:
"these are people you can give something
and they don't listen!"
They only listen to those who mislead them
and have done for centuries and centuries,
they've abused them, exploited them,
it's nothing new,
it's been going on 4000 or 5000 years!
The only advantage is to be aware of that
and want to escape this brainwashed state.
That's what's important.
but I realize that on the contrary
they don't want to escape that.
They get put there, in a nirvana,
they get put into a trance
but above all no-one wants them to get out.
I sincerely feel very sad for them.
So what conclusion can you draw from all that
when you realize something and
you know you're right,
because I know I'm right.
It's because I'm right that I left
that world behind.
That world where either I get eaten up
or it will lead to nothing.
It won't be any use.
You may as well say "amen to everything",
it won't be any use.
Being so militant won't do any good either.
That's my point of view now.
After 40 years of activism,
And what makes me the saddest intellectually now,
what makes me so emotional
is that what I did before actually changed NOTHING,
you understand?
Even the interview you're filming and listening to,
it won't do any good,
I'm sorry to disappoint you but I'm lucid.
I'm doing it because I thought
you were a nice guy
with your e-mails and all that
but I'm doing it without the slightest illusions.
I won't be unhappy if I think about
this interview again
if I live 5 or 10 years more or whatever!
But I feel sad about the hopes I had because...
I now realise they were...
they were illusory.
And that does make me sad you see?
ENGLISH VERSION: RICHARD DICKINSON
SUBTITLING: NICOLAS DROLC
