The shock wave of the September 28 riot in the Mayotte prison, in which a hundred inmates participated, continues to spread. First of all, it caused the surprise resignation of the prison administration of the director of the establishment, on Monday, October 7, to denounce the unprecedented overpopulation in Majicavo – 650 inmates imprisoned in 278 places –, as well as the lack of progress in the construction of a second island prison announced in March 2022 by former Justice Minister Eric Dupond-Moretti. Now it is the turn of Reunion Island to experience a replica of this event.
To secure the establishment after this riot, repair the damage and make “lower the pressure”The prison administration announced on Tuesday, October 8, the transfer of 27 inmates from Mayotte to the neighboring department of the Indian Ocean. A decision that made the “rebel” deputy of the Réunion, Jean-Hugues Ratenon, jump. “When I said that we transferred the violence from Mayotte to Réunion”reacted, refuting any “stigma in [s]it’s about”, but while defending “the choice to face the problem head-on.” Words that matter, because Mr. Ratenon had raised the ire of Mahor’s elected officials in March when, after several fights between gangs, he had written to the prefect of La Réunion to ask him to “Let’s not let Réunion Island become a second Mayotte in terms of violence”.
On October 8, the mayor of Saint-Denis, Ericka Bareigts (Socialist Party), also expressed concern about these transfers, stressing that the Réunion prisons “We already suffer from prison overcrowding”. With “the risk that the conditions of reception of prisoners in Réunion will deteriorate even further”.
The fear of “instrumentalization”
According to a prison source in La Reunión, the expression “transference violence” used by Jean-Hugues Ratenon, however, remains largely “exaggerated”. Because none of the transferred detainees belong to those who participated in the riot. Fifteen of them are due to be tried in November by the Mamoudzou judicial court. The prison administration has assured the unions of Mahorais guards and meetings that they will then be sent to establishments in France. In addition, twenty transfers of prisoners to Reunion Island were already scheduled and were planned for the Port penitentiary center, a center for the execution of sentences reserved for people definitively sentenced to sentences exceeding two years. Each month, these transfers to Réunion affect on average two prisoners from Mayotte, where there is no district of this type, specifies a prison source, who fears a “Instrumentalization of this matter”.
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