Prison of St-Laurent-du-Maroni - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

The prison of Saint-Laurent-du-Maroni
Saint-Laurent-du-Maroni
Saint-Laurent-du-Maroni is a commune of French Guiana, an overseas region and department of France located in South America. Saint-Laurent-du-Maroni is one of the two sub-prefectures of French Guiana and the seat of the Arrondissement of Saint-Laurent-du-Maroni...

(occasionally called Saint-Laurent-sur-Maroni) was the main penal establishment of French Guiana

French Guiana

French Guiana is an overseas region of France, consisting of a single overseas department located on the northern Atlantic coast of South America. It has borders with two nations, Brazil to the east and south, and Suriname to the west...

for a century. Some of the buildings were restored in the early 1980s.

History

On 22 November 1850, Napoleon III

Napoleon III of France

Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte was the President of the French Second Republic and as Napoleon III, the ruler of the Second French Empire. He was the nephew and heir of Napoleon I, christened as Charles Louis Napoléon Bonaparte...

declared: "Six thousand condemned men in our prisons weigh heavily on our budget, becoming increasingly depraved and constantly menacing our society. I think it is possible to make the sentence of forced labour more effective, more moralising, less expensive and more humane by using it to further the progress of French colonisation."

The first batch of prisoners left the Breton port of Brest

Brest, France

Brest is a city in the Finistère department in Brittany in northwestern France. Located in a sheltered position not far from the western tip of the Breton peninsula, and the western extremity of metropolitan France, Brest is an important harbour and the second French military port after Toulon...

for the Îles du Salut

Îles du Salut

The Îles du Salut are a group of small islands of volcanic origin about 11 km off the coast of French Guiana in the Atlantic Ocean...

on 31 March 1852. The prison at St-Laurent-du-Maroni was established on the banks of the Maroni River

Maroni River

The Maroni or Marowijne is a river in South America. It originates in the Tumuk Humak Mountains and forms the border between French Guiana and Suriname...

on 21 February 1858. All the prisoners sent from France were taken there before being transferred to other prisons or camps. The town of Saint-Laurent-du-Maroni proper was founded on 16 March 1880; it was a penal town whose inhabitants were nearly all guards or liberated prisoners. The hospital was built in 1912, and the prison itself closed in 1946, the same year the whole colonial penal system was abolished.

Life in the Prison

The prison at Saint-Laurent was but a temporary stop for most prisoners. Only a small number of men ever stayed in Saint-Laurent for long, and they were nearly all employed in the penitentiary administration or were considered harmless and unlikely to try to escape.

When a ship (such as La Loire or La Martinière) arrived from Saint-Martin-de-Ré

Saint-Martin-de-Ré

Saint-Martin-de-Ré is a commune in the Charente-Maritime department in southwestern France.It is one of the 10 communes located on the Île de Ré.-History:Saint-Martin-de-Ré has extensive fortifications, reflecting the strategic importance of the Île de Ré...

, the first order of the day was to separate the "chevaux de retour" (literally "returned horses", but meaning the escaped prisoners) and the recidivists from the rest, to send them to the Îles du Salut, from whose shores escape was considered impossible. (A few, however, succeeded; most famously, Henri Charrière

Henri Charrière

Henri Charrière was a convicted murderer chiefly known as the author of Papillon, a hugely successful memoir of his incarceration in and escape from a penal colony in French Guiana....

, who later wrote "Papillon".) The new prisoners then stayed for a while in Saint-Laurent, where they were sorted into different camps or prisons. The ones considered to be shifty and eager to escape were sent to the islands along with the recidivists and ex-escapees. The least dangerous men, condemned to prison for petty offences, were offered jobs in the penitentiary administration. The prisoners were also separated by nationality, as there were special camps reserved for those from Indochina

Indochina

The Indochinese peninsula, is a region in Southeast Asia. It lies roughly southwest of China, and east of India. The name has its origins in the French, Indochine, as a combination of the names of "China" and "India", and was adopted when French colonizers in Vietnam began expanding their territory...

, and the Arab

Arab

Arab people, also known as Arabs , are a panethnicity primarily living in the Arab world, which is located in Western Asia and North Africa. They are identified as such on one or more of genealogical, linguistic, or cultural grounds, with tribal affiliations, and intra-tribal relationships playing...

s often became guards.

Since there was a hospital in Saint-Laurent, many prisoners faked illnesses to get sent there, where they had plenty of time to plot escapes (as experienced and written by, among others, Charrière). Since many prisoners worked in the hospital, this was not terribly hard to do.

Those who were lucky enough to stay in Saint-Laurent were generally better treated than prisoners in other camps. Their work was simple, they were free to go wherever they wanted inside the prison, and were given better rations.

History

Life in the Prison

See also