What Awaits the Former President in the La Santé Facility and What Personal Items Did He Bring?
Perhaps France’s most notorious prison, La Santé – where former French president Nicolas Sarkozy is now serving a five year incarceration for unlawful collusion to raise election financing from Libya – is the last remaining prison within the city of Paris.
Situated in the southern Montparnasse area of the capital, it was inaugurated in the year 1867 and was the scene of at least 40 death penalties, the most recent in 1972. Partially closed for refurbishment in 2014, the institution resumed operations in 2019 and holds more than 1,100 prisoners.
Famous ex- prisoners comprise poet Guillaume Apollinaire, the financial trader Jérôme Kerviel, the government official and wartime collaborator Maurice Papon, the tycoon and political figure Bernard Tapie, the militant from the seventies Carlos the Jackal, and modeling agent Jean-Luc Brunel.
VIP Quarters for High-Profile Prisoners
Prominent or at-risk inmates are generally held in the prison's QB4 section for “vulnerable people” – the dubbed “premium block” – in individual cells, not the usual triple-occupancy cells, and separated during outdoor activities for security reasons.
Positioned on the initial level, the unit has nineteen similar cells and a dedicated exercise yard so inmates are not forced to mingle with other prisoners – even though they remain subject to shouts, taunts and cellphone pictures from adjacent cells.
Primarily for this reason, Sarkozy is set to be housed in the segregated section, which is in a isolated area. In reality, circumstances are much the same as in the QB4 ward: the former president will be solitary in his unit and accompanied by a corrections officer whenever he goes out.
“The aim is to avert any problems at all, so we must block him from meeting any inmates,” a prison source stated. “The easiest and best approach is to send Nicolas Sarkozy immediately to solitary confinement.”
Cell Conditions
Each of the isolation and protected units are identical to those elsewhere in the jail, measuring about eleven square meters, with window blinds designed to limit contact, a sleeping cot, a small desk, a shower, lavatory, and landline telephone with authorized contacts only.
Sarkozy will receive regular meals but will additionally have the option to the commissary, where he can acquire items to cook for himself, as well as to a small solitary outdoor space, a fitness room and the library. He can rent a cooling unit for seven euros fifty a monthly and a television for €14.15.
Limited Social Contact
Besides three authorized meetings a each week, he will primarily be on his own – a luxury in the facility, which notwithstanding its modernization is running at roughly twice its planned occupancy of 657 inmates. France’s jails are the third most overcrowded in the EU.
Personal Belongings
Sarkozy, who has steadfastly maintained his innocence, has said he will be taking with him a biography of Jesus and a version of The Count of Monte Cristo, by Alexandre Dumas, in which an innocent man is condemned to prison but flees to seek vengeance.
Sarkozy’s attorney, Jean-Michel Darrois, noted he was also bringing noise blockers because the jail can be disruptive at during the night, and several sweaters, because units can be cool. Sarkozy has commented he is unafraid of spending time in prison and aims to utilize the time to compose a publication.
Uncertain Duration
It is unclear, though, how long he will really remain in La Santé: his attorneys have submitted for his conditional release, and an judge on appeal will have to prove a risk of flight, further crimes or influencing testimony to warrant his further imprisonment.
France's jurists have proposed he may be freed in less than a month.
