“When I start a fire, it makes some light and I can see more clearly!”
Hafed Benotman, 2005
Contrary to what all the commentators keep broadcasting, the fires of the current revolt are telling us a lot. Not least about the police-justice-prison system, which is there above all to lock up the poor, especially young racialised proletarians — when it doesn’t kill them. In the face of the mass arrests of the last few days, going to the courts that have begun to try the rebels — and demanding a general amnesty — is the least we can do.
“There’s a dynamic in them that’s beyond them. In reality, they don’t obey any rational reasoning”, asserted the deputy public prosecutor of Nanterre after the announcement of the first incarcerations. Over and above his social contempt and racism, which are unfortunately widely shared, it is clear that he has a direct interest in depoliticising, de-socialising and animalising the rebels he is sending to prison… since the institution he represents is one of the targets of this popular revolt. We hear a lot about the attacks on town halls, police stations and supermarkets, but less about those on prisons, the Fresnes and Réau prisons, and the misnamed prison probation services (Spip). It would seem that whether they’ve been “intoxicated” by GTA or not, the kids revolting are well aware that prison is made for them — just as it was for their parents, who experienced the security turnaround of the 1980s and the explosion in mass incarceration. It would seem that “integration” is just another name for putting inner-city youth to work in degrading conditions.
The brutality of armed men lining the streets is only the most visible expression of state violence. After the policeman, it’s the judge who takes over; and after the judge, the warden. This is the penal chain: police-justice-prison. Like the police, the violence of the courts falls quietly every day on the poorest and most stigmatised classes in working-class neighbourhoods. “How many Nahel cases have not been filmed”, one banner reads. From 2014 to 2019, the police killed an average of 25 people a year; since then, the number of deaths at the hands of the forces of law and order has soared again — to 52 deaths in 2021, and more than 40 last year. And how many more will die in prison? It’s impossible to say: there are never any pictures, of course. We think of Sambaly, Jawad, Idir, Alassane, Jimony, Taoufik, Théo, Gordana and so many others. Prisoners and their families have been repeating it on the radio and in our newspaper for twenty years: prison guards are violent every day. They humiliate, some beat and some kill behind the high walls of France’s prisons, especially in solitary confinement. In these places, there are no witnesses other than the surveillance cameras, and the officers know all the blind spots. Like the police, they are covered up by their superiors and acquitted by the courts.
The judicial phase of the repression of social movements does not produce revolting images, but it is no less violent for all that. The Minister of Justice, Dupont-Moretti, has already announced the general mobilisation of the judicial machine to crush the movement. It’s a safe bet that the figures for 2005 (800 rioters were sentenced to prison in three weeks) and those for the Yellow Vests (1,500 prison sentences in five months) will be far exceeded. His circular to the public prosecutor’s office mirrors the one targeting the Yellow Vest movement — with the added bonus of criminalising parents. The Minister is encouraging the use of the offence of “participation in a group with a view to preparing violence”, which makes it possible to convict anyone present at the scene, in the absence of any other evidence against them. Prosecutors are being asked to “defer” everyone systematically, even minors. This will result in a huge number of people being imprisoned, because the criminal penalties that follow a deferral are generally heavier and more brutal. There has been an exponential increase in the use of summary trials since the major revolts of 2005, and they are used on a massive scale during social unrest.
The Minister is also asking for the figures to be brought up on a daily basis for communication purposes — to extinguish the suspicion of that elusive “judicial laxity” that is invariably invoked by the right and the far-right. Because the armed far-right is on the offensive in the media and on the streets: the same police unions that demand “respect for the presumption of innocence” and “the independence of the judiciary” for their colleague are at the same time demanding that justice be automated even more for those they describe as “nuisances”, “savage hordes” and “chienlit”. To eradicate them, they are once again demanding full powers, calling for the “rearmament of the police”. This term was used by Marine Le Pen in 2017 after Théo was raped by other fascist police officers. Just before that, armed cops had demonstrated not far from the Elysée Palace. They were warming up at the time. At the next elections, they demonstrated, this time in front of the National Assembly, to denounce this chimerical “judicial laxity”. Darmanin, already Minister of the Interior, joined them to pledge his support. On the strength of these successive symbolic victories, the Alliance and UNSA unions [far-right police and majority unions] have prospered and assumed their fascist orientation at the heart of the police force, but also in the prison service. Today’s seditious threats are the logical outcome of long-term negotiations within the State to toughen up the regime and further arm these already armed men. Which is what it is doing, by deploying the Raid [counterterrorism police unit] and the BRI [anti-gang, antiterrorism police unit], who are firing in the streets.
Faced with these armed gangs taking the State and the streets hostage, it’s elsewhere that we need to build a balance of power. If there’s one place where we need to be, it’s in the courts and in front of the prisons: to tell the justice system that we don’t agree, and to make people feel less alone in the face of an institution directed entirely against them. Meetings, collectives and rallies are already being organised to confront the immense police and judicial repression that the state will continue to deploy. There have been almost 4,000 arrests in a week, and the first searches have already taken place. Let’s get together in large numbers in the courts and in front of the prisons so that collective self-defence in the face of justice becomes an integral part of the movement.
We need to find the strength and determination to demand an amnesty for all those charged, i.e. the dropping of all charges against them and their immediate release. Those who took part in the social movement against pension reform, those who are mobilising against the dissolution of Soulèvement de la terre, left-wing and human rights organisations can find here the means to show solidarity with those in revolt. In the streets, the popular revolt has already targeted the penal system, which is used mainly to lock up those who suffer the full brunt of economic violence, while covering up the violence of its agents. A call for a general amnesty would be the first step towards breaking the legal machinery that locks up the children of the colonised, foreigners and the poor in France’s suburbs every day; all of whom are fed up with being stigmatised, imprisoned and targeted.
