In France, Prisons Filled With Muslims
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This prison [Lille-Sequedin Detention Center in far northern France] is majority Muslim—as is virtually every house of incarceration in France. About 60 to 70 percent of all inmates in the country’s prison system are Muslim, according to Muslim leaders, sociologists and researchers, though Muslims make up only about 12 percent of the country’s population.
On a continent where immigrants and the children of immigrants are disproportionately represented in almost every prison system, the French figures are the most marked, according to researchers, criminologists and Muslim leaders.
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In Britain, 11 percent of prisoners are Muslim in contrast to about 3 percent of all inhabitants, according to the Justice Ministry. Research by the Open Society Institute, an advocacy organization, shows that in the Netherlands 20 percent of adult prisoners and 26 percent of all juvenile offenders are Muslim; the country is about 5.5 percent Muslim. In Belgium, Muslims from Morocco and Turkey make up at least 16 percent of the prison population, compared with 2 percent of the general populace, the research found.
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French prison officials blame the high numbers on the poverty of people who have moved here from North African and other Islamic countries in recent decades. “Many immigrants arrive in France in difficult financial situations, which make delinquency more frequent,” said Jeanne Sautière, director of integration and religious groups for the French prison system. “The most important thing is to say there is no correlation between Islam and delinquency.”
But Muslim leaders, sociologists and human rights activists argue that more than in most other European countries, government social policies in France have served to isolate Muslims in impoverished suburbs that have high unemployment, inferior schools and substandard housing. This has helped create a generation of French-born children with little hope of social advancement and even less respect for French authority.
“The question of discrimination and justice is one of the key political questions of our society, and still, it is not given much importance,” said Sebastian Roche, who has studied judicial discrimination as research director for the French National Center for Scientific Research. “We can’t blame a state if its companies discriminate; however, we can blame the state if its justice system and its police discriminate.”
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In recent years, the French government’s primary concern with its Muslim inmate population has been political. French national security officials warned prison authorities in 2005 that they should work to prevent radical Muslims from inciting fellow prisoners. A year later, the French Senate approved a bill giving the country’s national intelligence agency broad authority to monitor Muslim inmates as part of counterterrorism efforts.
Prison authorities began allowing carefully vetted moderate imams into prisons in hopes of “balancing the radical elements,” said Aurélie Leclerq, 33, director of the Lille-Sequedin Detention Center.
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Today, working in France’s newest prison—the sprawling, three-year-old Lille-Sequedin center—the El Alaoui Talibis say they are more accepted than some Muslim colleagues at other prisons. Prison officials rejected requests by The Washington Post to visit some of the system’s older, more troubled prisons.
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Many of the Muslim inmates in this prison just west of Lille are the children and grandchildren of immigrants who were brought to the northern region decades ago to work in its coal mines.
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The refusal of prison officials to provide halal food, particularly meat products, is one of the biggest complaints of Muslim inmates across France and has occasionally led to cellblock protests.
For many years, prisons have allowed Muslim prisoners to forgo pork products—and statistics tracking prisoners who refuse pork is an accurate barometer of the Muslim population in a prison, according to researchers. But cutting out pork is a long way from the full halal regimen. Only recently, did the prisons stop using pork grease to cook vegetables and other dishes.
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Prison officials say it is too expensive to provide halal meals. “We’d like to buy fresh meat, but we can’t,” said Leclerq, whose prison office is decorated with plush bears.
Muslim inmates said they sense other religious snubs. Christians are allowed packages containing gifts and special treats from their families at Christmas, but Muslims do not receive the same privilege for the Ramadan holy days. “We’re careful not to call them Christmas packages because Muslims would ask for Ramadan packages,” Leclerq said. “We call them end-of-the-year packages. We can’t use a religious term or some people get tense.”
Hassan El Alaoui Talibi said the French prison system has made progress since he began his ministry a decade ago. Last year the government set guidelines for all prisons to follow on religious practices, rather than allowing directors to arbitrarily set their own rules.
Prison imams met with Justice Minister Rachida Dati last month with a list of continuing requests, including more imams and training for prison guards to help them better understand religious differences.
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(Posted on April 29, 2008)
Comments
How about blaming poverty AND stupidity? And lack of interest in adapting to the new country?
Posted by at 6:56 PM on April 29
I bet the citizens of France now wish their immigration policy had been tightened years ago. All that liberalism has come back to bite them in the butt.
Posted by at 7:00 PM on April 29
Hey France….welcome to the club, my countries prisons are filled with not only blacks, latinos…and other assorted lice….we have three times the problem you do.
Posted by lydia at 7:56 PM on April 29
Good! Refuse to accomodate Muslims and you have a natural way to track those who are becoming radicalized. If they start throwing fits and riots then they can be placed into solitary confinement and deported upon release.
Posted by Spartan24 at 8:24 PM on April 29
usually the MSM call them North Africans
Posted by enraged at 8:25 PM on April 29
France will come up with a solution. How about an Affirmative Action program? If Muslims commit more crimes than their numbers in the population reflects they should, just send them to the U.S. We can handle them.
Posted by Frank at 9:32 PM on April 29
The most important thing is to say there is no correlation between Islam and delinquency.
Yeah right.
Just compare the crime rate among Pakistanis in the U.K. to that among Indians in the U.K. Here we have two groups of people of the same race, in the same environment. They are identical in every way, except for the fact that the Pakistanis are Muslims and commit lots of crime and the Indians are not Muslims and commit very little crime.
Do these people really believe their own bovine scat?
Posted by qwerty at 4:25 AM on April 30
‘About 60-70% of prisoners in France are muslims, althouhj muslims are 12% of the French population’.
Just how can anyone argue against this harsh, brute fact that non-White immigration into France is a disaster, has been a disaster and will be a disaster?
Posted by Kenelm Digby at 7:33 AM on April 30
5.5% of Holland is Muslim?
2% of Belguim is Muslim?
3% of England is Muslim?
Those figures sound suspiciously low, especially the one about England. My hunch is the Muslim population in those countries is far higher than anyone wants to admit.
Posted by Dennis at 12:12 PM on April 30
Life in a French prison is better than life in a Muslim country. Life in a French prison is to parasitically live off the taxpayers of France. Life in a French prison is a boarding school and training camp for Muslim radicals. Life in France will be much better for the legitimate Frenchmen if the French deport every last one of these incompatible Islamic throwbacks…
Posted by at 12:15 PM on April 30
And American prisons are filled with blacks who convert to Islam while in prison.
Is there a connection between criminality and Islam? A connection between criminality and race? An interplay of all three?
Posted by sbuffalonative at 1:10 PM on April 30
100% of the French should be thrown in jail for allowing Muslim’s to become 12% of France’s population.
Posted by Mark at 2:25 PM on April 30
This is absolutely terrible. If the racists are allowed to have criminals *locked up*, it implies that they feel they have the “right” to live their lives in peace. They migt go to and from school or work without being robbed or raped, and THEN WHERE WOULD WE BE?
Posted by Michael C. Scott at 4:11 PM on April 30
Didn’t the French rejoice when the Germans left? They will be drunken with happiness when the hated Muslim invaders leave. The real French absolutely hate those people and want them out of the country. If the Africans can kick the whites out of Africa as they are doing, the Europeans must kick the Africans and Muslims out of Europe. Anything less is suicide. Those racist foreign invaders are destroying Europe and EVERY European is aware of this. It is like a Great Earthquake or Tsunami is coming for them and they know it.
Posted by Elrey Jones at 10:20 PM on April 30
The refusal of prison officials to provide halal food, particularly meat products, is one of the biggest complaints of Muslim inmates across France and has occasionally led to cellblock protests.
Prison officials say it is too expensive to provide halal meals. “We’d like to buy fresh meat, but we can’t,” said Leclerq, whose prison office is decorated with plush bears.
When you’ve robbed/raped/murdered/whatever another human being, I for one think you should be mighty happy to eating anything at all, or even to be still above ground to do so. You’re not really in a position to be picky.
As to the obvious jab at the Prison Director, inferring that she is a liar, let me ask you this: Are those plush bears her personal belongings bought with her own money, or decorations paid for out of the prison budget? To go by the article, you’d think it was the latter.
Posted by BW Sam at 2:17 PM on May 1
“The refusal of prison officials to provide halal food, particularly meat products, is one of the biggest complaints of Muslim inmates across France and has occasionally led to cellblock protests.”
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Don’t like it? Well then, there’s a simple solution: Don’t go to prison, that’s all.
Posted by voter at 6:18 PM on May 1
‘About 60-70% of prisoners in France are muslims, although muslims are 12% of the French population’.
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Of course there is absolutely no relationship between the two. Only a whacko racist would say there is. It’s just coincidence, that’s all!
That’s like claiming there’s no relationship between clouds and rain.
Posted by voter at 6:19 PM on May 1
We need international coordination to fight black on white racism and crime as it is happening in all nations that whites reside. I’m for worldwide protest and non-violent actions and reparations for the oppression and denial of human rights the black people have caused us.
Posted by Elrey Jones at 6:27 PM on May 1
“government social policies in France have served to isolate Muslims in impoverished suburbs” - Did the writer not consider that maybe the (real) French perhaps don’t want to live near these Muslims?
Posted by Ed at 5:25 PM on May 9