Politics. Drug traffickers and radicals: Darmanin announces the creation of an ultra-secure prison in French Guiana

Minister of Justice Gérald Darmanin announced this Saturday, in an interview with the Journal du Dimanche , the opening by 2028 of a high-security prison with 500 places in Saint-Laurent-du-Maroni, in the heart of the Guyanese jungle.

"I have decided to establish France's third maximum-security prison in French Guiana. Sixty places, an extremely strict prison regime, and one objective: to put the most dangerous drug traffickers out of harm's way," the minister declared during a trip to French Guiana. "Fifteen places" will also be "dedicated to Islamists/radicalized individuals," his office confirmed to AFP.

"My strategy is simple: to strike organized crime at all levels. Here, at the beginning of the drug trade. In mainland France, by neutralizing the heads of the network. And all the way to the users. This prison will be a key in the war against drug trafficking," the minister added. The Minister of Justice, who has made the fight against drug trafficking his priority, hopes that this prison "will serve to permanently remove the heads of the drug trafficking network" because "they will no longer be able to have any contact with their criminal networks." According to the JDD , the building permit for this building, located on several dozen hectares of land in the Amazon jungle and costing 400 million euros, is about to be signed by the prefect.

Saint-Laurent-du-Maroni is the strategic crossroads for "mules," particularly from Brazil, who attempt to board a plane to Orly Airport every day with cocaine from neighboring Suriname, on the other side of the river, in their luggage or in their stomachs. It is also the former port of entry to the penal colony where convicts from mainland France disembarked from 1850 to 1938. In January, the Minister of Justice had already announced his intention to isolate the "100 biggest drug traffickers" by the summer in "a high-security prison," previously emptied of its inmates, in order to prevent them from continuing their criminal activity from their cells.

French Guiana, the most crime-prone department in France in proportion to its population, experienced a record year in 2023 in terms of homicides, with 20.6 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants, when the national average stood at 1.5/100,000.