Around twenty officers at Nice's maison d'arrêt blocked the facility for a full day this week, protesting staff shortages and overcrowding at a prison now running at more than double its intended capacity, according to ICI Azur.
Nordine Souab, a representative of the UFAP-UNSA Justice union, said the situation had become untenable at a facility dating to the 1870s. "The heat situation is very complicated, especially with a prison from the 1870s," he said. "Of more than 700 detainees, we have around a hundred officers, while the detention centre is overcrowded at more than 200 percent capacity."
Family members of detainees have described conditions inside as increasingly severe amid the ongoing heatwave. Brigitte, whose son is held at the facility, said cells were flirting with 40 degrees. "It's unbearable, but he tells me, mum, this is prison, I have to put up with it, it's my punishment," she said.
France's national prison oversight body, the Contrôleure générale des lieux de privation de liberté, has previously found the facility's electrical installations non-compliant, noting exposed wiring that has given at least one detainee repeated electric shocks, alongside cells with minimal natural light and ventilation the CGLPL described as particularly poor during heatwave conditions.