The newspaper said that of the 69,173 detainees registered in France’s prisons on October 1, 2021, whether they were in pretrial detention or convicted, there are 17,198 foreigners.
Thus, the total percentage of foreign prisoners increased to 25 percent, compared to 17.2 percent in 2011.
According to the French newspaper, about 56 percent of foreign prisoners are from the African continent.
Algerians top the list with 3,472 prisoners, then Morocco with 2,220, followed by Tunisia with 1,117 and 2,984 from the rest of the African countries, while there are 5,109 prisoners of European origin, and 1,308 from America.
Given the high number of foreign detainees in French prisons during the last decade, the annual bill spent by the prison system on them amounted to about 700 million euros, knowing that the cost of spending on a prisoner is 110 euros per day, and it includes food, water, heating and the costs of the staff supervising his detention.
Prior to the release of this report, the French right-wing parties had confirmed these figures, linking the Republican candidate, Valerie Pecres, in a tweet on Twitter, “the failure of integration with deviation.”
However, the French Minister of Justice, Eric Dupond Moretti, was surprised by these proportions when he was hosted on the “LCI” news channel, and stated that he preferred to see the immigration problem “in a broad way, and not only in the shadow of delinquency.”
Expulsion is the solution
According to Le Figaro, only some foreign prisoners are returned to their countries of origin to spend the remainder of their sentences there, according to bilateral agreements, at a maximum rate of fifteen per year, most of which are the subject of arrest warrants.
“It is unfortunate because it allows these offenders to have a clean record in their country,” the newspaper quoted an executive in the prison administration as saying.
However, Parliamentarian Dominique Bild of the right-wing National Front party insisted that these foreign detainees be expelled as a solution to “make room and save the French”.
What does French law say?
Lawyer Abdel Majid Al-Maghari confirmed in a statement to “Sky News Arabia” that French law basically prohibits statistics based on racial, ethnic or religious backgrounds, so it is difficult for France to accurately determine the number of immigrants by nationalities. However, he agrees, on the other hand, with the fact that most of the foreigners detained in French prisons are “from the Maghreb”.
Al-Maghari added, “They are being detained on the basis of the public right, which means crimes and misdemeanours, judicial follow-ups, and charges of theft described, assaults and others.”
An investigation published by the International Prison Observatory indicates that for the same crime committed by a foreigner or a French national, a foreigner is three times more likely to be sentenced on the spot, five times more likely to be remanded in custody, and eight times more likely to be sentenced to prison.
Virginie Gutron, a researcher and lecturer in criminal law and criminal sciences at the University of Nantes, denies the existence of “voluntary discrimination” for judges, saying: “Justice seeks above all to prevent foreign defendants from escaping justice by fleeing to another country.”
In turn, Maghari considered that “the deportation is illegal, and there is no constitutional justification that grants this authority because they are French citizens with French citizenship and of Maghreb origins. Most of them are children of France. They were born and raised in the neighborhoods of its cities, and studied in its schools.”
“For this reason, the Algerian authorities absolutely refuse to deport them, as they are French and not Algerians. As for Morocco, it has accepted the deportation of a very small number of first-generation immigrants who hold only residency cards and have not obtained French citizenship,” he said.
He concluded his speech by saying: “French law rejects this procedure. These are administrative decisions issued after the last amendment to the Terrorism Law, which introduced a set of procedures and gave administrative interests the ability to take such decisions.”