Perhaps France’s most fabled jail, La Santé – where the former French president Nicolas Sarkozy has begun a five-year term for criminal conspiracy to raise campaign funds from Libya – is the last remaining prison inside the Paris city limits.
Located in the southern Montparnasse district of the capital, it opened in 1867 and was the scene of at least 40 executions, the last in 1972. Partially closed for renovation in 2014, the prison reopened five years later and houses more than 1,100 inmates.
Famous former detainees include the poet Guillaume Apollinaire, the rogue trader Jérôme Kerviel, the civil servant and Nazi collaborator Maurice Papon, the businessman and politician Bernard Tapie, the 70s terrorist Carlos the Jackal, and model agent Jean-Luc Brunel.
Prominent or at-risk prisoners are generally held in the jail’s QB4 ward for “vulnerable people” – the so-called “VIP quarters” – in single cells, not the usual three-person units, and kept alone during outdoor activities for security reasons.
Located on the first floor, the ward has 19 identical cells and a dedicated exercise yard so inmates are not obliged to mingle with other prisoners – although they remain subject to whistles, jeers and smartphone photos from nearby cells.
Mainly for that reason, Sarkozy will reportedly be held in the isolation ward, which is in a separate wing. In reality, conditions are much the same as in QB4: the former president will be alone in his cell and accompanied by a guard whenever he leaves it.
“The goal is to avoid any incidents whatsoever, so we must prevent him from meeting any inmates,” a prison source told Le Monde. “The simplest and most effective solution is to send Nicolas Sarkozy directly to solitary confinement.”
Both isolation and VIP cells are identical to those elsewhere in the jail, averaging about 10 sq metres, with window coverings designed to limit communication, a bed, a small desk, a shower, toilet, and landline telephone with pre-recorded numbers.
Sarkozy will be served regular meals but will also have access to the canteen, where he can buy food to prepare himself, as well as to a small solitary exercise yard, a gym and the library. He can rent a fridge for €7.50 (£6.50) a month and a TV for €14.15.
Apart from three permitted visits a week, he will mostly be on his own – a luxury in La Santé, which despite its recent renovation is operating at about double its intended capacity of 657 inmates. France’s jails are the third most overcrowded in the EU.
Sarkozy, who has consistently protested his innocence, has said he will be taking with him a biography of Jesus and a copy of The Count of Monte Cristo, by Alexandre Dumas, in which an innocent man is sentenced to jail but escapes to take revenge.
Sarkozy’s lawyer, Jean-Michel Darrois, said he was also taking earplugs because prison can be noisy at night, and several sweaters, because cells can be cold. Sarkozy has said he is not scared of spending time in jail and plans to use it to write a book.
It is unclear, however, how long he will actually stay in La Santé: his lawyers have already filed for his early release, and an appeals judge will have to prove a risk of flight, reoffending of witness-tampering to justify his continued detention.
French legal experts have suggested he could be out within a month.
