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My Profile Top News Reuters top ten news stories delivered to your inbox each day. Subscribe You are here: Home > News > International > Article Home Business & Finance News U.S. Politics International Technology Entertainment Sports Lifestyle Oddly Enough Health Science Special Coverage Video Pictures Your View The Great Debate Blogs Weather Reader Feedback Do More With Reuters RSS Widgets Mobile Podcasts Newsletters Your View Make Reuters My Homepage Partner Services CareerBuilder Affiliate Network Professional Products Support (Customer Zone) Reuters Media Financial Products About Thomson Reuters In France's jails, a toxic mix of grime and despair Wed Sep 23, 2009 10:49am EDT Email | Print | Share | Reprints | Single Page [-] Text [+] By Sophie Hardach PARIS (Reuters) - When Marie-Christine Menaspa last saw her husband, Mickael Gerard, in a filthy, overcrowded jail in the French town of Agen, he said he was looking forward to joining her and their two children after his imminent release. A day later, on May 26, he hanged himself. Gerard, imprisoned for petty crimes, was one of more than 80 prisoners who committed suicide here this year -- a national scandal in a country that prides itself on being the cradle of human rights but has one of Europe's highest jail suicide rates. "Not a day went by when I didn't think about hanging myself," Soad Boukourdane, a Parisian public relations manager and former inmate, told Reuters at her home in Paris. Inmates talk with despair of packed cells where the latest arrivals have to sleep on mattresses on the floor, next to an open toilet and the tables where the cellmates eat. Overburdened guards describe themselves as mere key-bearers who are unable to prevent knife fights and rape among inmates. France's suicide rate of 16 cases per 10,000 prisoners compares with 10 in Germany and 9 in England and Wales, European Union penal statistics for 2006 showed. By 2008, according to a French government report, the rate had risen to 17. President Nicolas Sarkozy called jails "the disgrace of the Republic" in June, and the government has taken emergency steps such as handing out paper pyjamas to prevent hangings. But experts say a radical overhaul is needed. "He was in a cell built for six, and there were eight. There was everything in there, a man who killed a baby, one who was sentenced for rape," Menaspa, Gerard's widow, told Reuters. France locks up some 125 prisoners per 100 places, compared to 97 in Germany and 96 in England and Wales, according to EU data for 2007. Its prison population has soared as a result of a tougher policy on crime, but depleted state coffers due to the economic crisis mean there is little money for jails and staff. KNIFINGS AND MILDEW Boukourdane, the PR manager, spent two months in Europe's biggest jail, the 3,800-strong Fleury-Merogis prison near Paris. Like some 40 percent of inmates in France, her five cellmates were illiterate. A cellmate's rotten, infected tooth was left to fester for 15 days, despite written requests for help. Guards could not prevent daily knife attacks, some against pregnant women, said Boukourdane, who was jailed in 2005 as part of a financial fraud investigation. Continued... View article on single page Share: Del.icio.us Digg Mixx Yahoo! Facebook LinkedIn Next Article: Berlusconi government under fire over fraud amnesty plan Pittsburgh G20 summit Bankers pay and the need to examine strategies for withdrawing state stimulus for the global economy have dominated debate ahead of a G20 summit in Pittsburgh on September 24-25. Full Coverage Path forward to Pittsburgh G20 summit More International News Honduras standoff at Brazil embassy set for long haul | Video Merkel eyes centre-right as election nears Doubts loom large after Obama's Mideast summit Qaeda's Zawahri attacks Obama, Arabs in new video Dust storm blankets Sydney as drought bites | Video More International News... 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