France will open its first prison dedicated to isolating the country’s top 100 drug lords in July as part of efforts to stop inmates from running criminal networks from behind bars.
However some unions and advocates of prison reform have expressed doubts over the initiative.
Some 17,000 people are imprisoned in France for drug trafficking and organised crime offences.
The transfer of those deemed most dangerous will begin in March, with the renovated facility set to open by 31 July, Justice Minister Gérald Darmanin said on Wednesday.
Two more similar facilities are planned over the next two years.
"We are going to take a French prison, we will empty it... secure it with specially trained prison officers, and once isolated, we will put in the 100 biggest narco-traffickers," Darmanin told Le Monde newspaper.
Darmanin said the inmates would be held in “an inviolable detention facility” where it will be “absolutely impossible” for them to receive phones or drugs, threaten officers, or communicate with the outside world.
The location of the facility has not been disclosed, but Darmanin stressed its goal: to stop inmates from orchestrating crimes from behind bars.
“What is unbearable is that prisons are no longer obstacles for most drug traffickers to continue their trafficking, assassinate, or threaten magistrates, prison officers, journalists, or lawyers,” he said.
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