The deadly heatwave sweeping France has once again exposed the structural problems of the country’s chronically overcrowded prisons, with groups of three or four detainees crammed into airless cells built to hold a lone prisoner. Analysts and prison staff alike have criticised a penal system that continues to see mass incarceration as the main means of cracking down on crime.
Even the highest prison walls can’t keep out the heat. As temperatures rise past 40°C (104°F) across swaths of France, the heat creeps through thick concrete, slips down hollow pipes and seeps under the reinforced doors that divide the prisoners from the free.
