“While about 60% of the incarcerated population in France, today that’s around 40,000 prisoners, can be considered culturally or religiously Muslim, the Islamist radicalization is now likely to involve several hundred prisoners,” stated UMP member Guillaume Larrivé in a report “For an Islamist Anti-Radicalization Plan in Prison.”
Larrivé worked to update the penitentiary administrative budget for 2015, and advocates for “a shock therapy:” the creation of Anti-Radicalization Specialized Units (USAR) for prisoners returning from jihad, which would include instituting PA systems in prisons and blocking unauthorized phones. He contends that in today’s prison system, “outside signs of radicalization have practically disappeared, leaving a place for radicalization and proselytizing that is much more discreet and therefore harder to detect.”
He discusses the politics of the Minister of Justice Christiane Taubira, and contends that “substantial leeway created by the 2015 Finance Act within the prison administration budget is in fact absorbed by the ‘Taubira Law,’ that is, favoring an approach of ‘social treatment’ of offenders outside the prison walls.” Larrivé argues that, “the government has chosen to privilege freedom…offenders whose places are in prisons and to increase the number of probation officers who do not assure real control of former inmates.”
According to Larrivé, this legislation “is to the detriment of the pursuit of a development programmed tailored to the needs of our country and to the security of our prisons.”
