France to Deport Foreign Inmates to Serve Sentences in Home Countries

"And so what I’m going to do, very soon, in the coming days, it doesn’t exist at the Ministry of Justice. It’s a job to obviously expel these people so that they can serve their sentence in their country of origin," Darmanin said on the microphone of Sud Radio, referring to the case of Moroccan detainees who will be able to benefit from this measure in the coming weeks. "I was in Morocco last week and we agreed with the Moroccan Minister of Justice that we will exchange, if I dare say, these detainees. Today, the detainee’s opinion must be requested. Tomorrow, we will no longer need it."

The Keeper of the Seals recalled that 25% of inmates in French prisons are foreigners and that two-thirds of them are non-European. This measure to expel foreign inmates is a European framework decision that has been incorporated into the French Code of Criminal Procedure to allow nationals of European countries detained in France to serve their sentence in their country of origin, according to Le Figaro.

For non-European foreign inmates, the signing of a bilateral agreement is necessary, "subject to potential appeals from human rights defense associations, lawyers or inmate associations," particularly on the issue of respect for human rights in these countries, explains Wilfried Fonck, national secretary of the Ufap Unsa Justice. According to him, the measure aimed at decongesting French prisons could nevertheless prove ineffective. "There is no volumetry of French nationals detained abroad," he warns, highlighting the risk of a significant return of French detainees.