BELEAGUERED FRENCH justice minister Rachida Dati faces another crisis today as prison officers launch a crippling four-day strike over a lack of resources to deal with France’s overcrowded prisons.
French prisons, dubbed “the nation’s shame”, have one of the highest suicide rates in Europe.
There are regular murders, escapes, drug-dealing and such acute overcrowding that prisoners often sleep on mattresses on the floor in buildings crammed to double capacity. There were 115 suicides in prisons last year and about 50 so far this year. Some prison officers have also taken their own lives.
Failure to address France’s prison crisis is one of the biggest black marks in what critics call Ms Dati’s disastrous tenure as justice minister. “The minister doesn’t have the capacity to recognise the catastrophic state of our prisons and our working conditions,” said Celine Verzeletti, of the communist-leaning CGT union.
Following Ms Dati’s failure to negotiate a way out of the strike, warders from the biggest three unions will today begin blocking all prisoner movement and transfers at more than 190 prisons, eventually blocking all outside visits, including those from lawyers and families.
Ms Dati, who is standing in the European elections next month, has faced a series of embarrassments in recent weeks, highlighting her fall from grace from protege of president Nicolas Sarkozy, to a thorn in his side. The first Muslim woman of north African parentage to hold a top cabinet post, Ms Dati will shortly be forced to quit government to focus on the European elections – chosen for her by the president as a dignified exit. But the transition has not been smooth.
Ms Dati’s giggling and incoherent answers during a recent European election meeting with young activists became an internet hit and some critics asked whether she was deliberately trying to sabotage her party’s campaign.
Earlier, the latest in a line of best-selling books about Ms Dati accused her of ruthlessly plotting her self-advancement. The book, Mascara and Tears, said one of Ms Dati’s “best little coups” took place in January when she turned up at the Elysee palace unannounced – “to avoid being brushed off” – carrying her newborn baby. Presenting the baby to the president, she asked him to be godfather, to which he could not say no. “Carla [Bruni-Sarkozy] was furious when she heard. It was the straw that broke the camel’s back,” the writer, Jacqueline Remy, said.
Ms Dati has recently been on a media offensive to rebuff her critics, giving interviews with her father and siblings to show her family side, while keeping her daughter out of the limelight and protecting the secrecy around the identity of the child’s father. Last week, she said criticisms of her performance over Europe had been taken out of context, but she is under pressure to prove herself on the campaign trail over the coming weeks. – (Guardian service)