14 June 2018
rue François Arago, Cayenne

Last year I stayed in Cayenne and happened to come past the former maison d’arrêt while the new murals were being painted. The old prison which existed alongside the A.P. but operated separately. It was built in 1821 and so pre-dates the Administration Pénitentiaire. A new larger prison opened in Remire-Montjoly in 1998 but the old Maison d’Arrêt continued to operate for a while afterwards. The renovation project is part of an apprenticeship scheme for under 25s and there’s a short article is France-Guyane available here.

The maison d’arrêt is an interesting bit of standalone penal heritage in a town that had erased most traces of its history within the penal colony. This isn’t to say it did not interact with the bagne as bagnards released from imprisonment but obliged to stay in French Guiana as part of the doublage system often ended up there after committing various crimes (often related to the abject poverty they experienced since the A.P. no longer bore any responsibility towards them). It is thus important as part of the overlapping parallel and extended history of incarceration in French Guiana. The prison at Rémire-Montjoly has been subjected to severe criticism for its overcrowding and violence. In 2016, the Observatoire International des Prisons (OIP) wrote a scathing report on the prison, characterising it in terms of ‘un climat de violence permanent’. Plans for a new prison at Saint Laurent du Maroni are currently underway. Where there are intense debates in both SLM and Cayenne around the project for the mine d’or, there seems to be little to no discussion about the construction of a new prison. I cannot help but see a link between the two projects. I hope to write more on this later.