‘Like working in a kettle’: France’s overcrowded prisons swelter under historic heatwave
Key takeaways
- Analysts and prison staff alike have criticised a penal system that continues to see mass incarceration as the main means of cracking down on crime.
- As temperatures rise past 40°C (104°F) across swaths of France, the heat creeps through thick concrete, slips down hollow pipes and seeps under the reinforced doors that divide the prisoners from the free.
- France’s prisons were not built to withstand these temperatures.
Why this matters: an international story with cross-border implications worth tracking.
The deadly heatwave sweeping France has once again exposed the structural problems of the country’s chronically overcrowded prisons, with groups of three or four detainees crammed into airless cells built to hold a lone prisoner. Analysts and prison staff alike have criticised a penal system that continues to see mass incarceration as the main means of cracking down on crime.
By: Paul MILLAR A detainee is pictured in his prison cell at the Hauts-de-Seine remand centre, in Nanterre, suburbs of Paris, on January 15, 2026. © Stéphane de Sakutin, AFP Even the highest prison walls can’t keep out the heat. As temperatures rise past 40°C (104°F) across swaths of France, the heat creeps through thick concrete, slips down hollow pipes and seeps under the reinforced doors that divide the prisoners from the free.
France’s prisons were not built to withstand these temperatures. Prisoners complain of scalding water spraying from the showers; prison guards, of centuries-old walls that hold the day’s heat through to the early light of dawn.