Tried alongside those who helped him escape from the Réau penitentiary center (Seine-et-Marne) in 2018, Rédoine Faïd will be decided on his fate on Wednesday October 25. This escape was marked by its spectacular nature – careful preparation and a flight by helicopter – and by the identity of its author, a repeat offender in this matter. In fact, such operations are rare and, yet, there are dozens of detainees who, each year, are considered escapees.

Rédoine Faïd was not at his first attempt: he had already escaped in 2013 from the Lille-Loos-Sequedin remand center (North) using explosives. Over the first nine months of 2023, the prison administration counted fifteen escapes from the place of detention for 72,173 people incarcerated as of January 1, or two per 10,000 prisoners.

But spectacular escapes are rare. Most are done without violence and without a plan worthy of the Prison Break series. The penal code has a broader definition: “A punishable escape is the act, by a prisoner, of escaping from the custody to which he is subject. »

They can take place during hospitalizations, judicial extractions (transfer from the prison to the court), outside projects and especially during leave or walks, by not reintegrating the centers for modified sentences or semi- freedom or by getting rid of an electronic monitoring bracelet. In 2021, the Council of Europe recorded 734 escapes of all types in France, or 105 per 10,000 prisoners.

Methods of incarceration and ways of classifying escapes have evolved over time, making comparisons over time very difficult. However, we can observe major trends:

• Before the end of the 17th century, detention did not have the same function as it does today. Prisons are used to hold prisoners before their trial and do not constitute punishment in themselves, explains Marie Houllemare, professor of modern history at the University of Geneva. Adjoined to the courts, the prisons are at the heart of the city. The escape is then a question of discretion: “The prisoners disguise themselves, force a window,” explains the historian. And particularly outside Paris where the prisons, subordinate jurisdictions, are in poor condition, making the game easier for the escapees.

• From 1852 and at the request of the imperial administration, annual reports on the statistics of prisons and penal establishments were published. Louis Perrot, Inspector General of Prisons, addresses to “His Majesty” the following observation: three escapes from central prisons and 76 from departmental prisons for 48,390 prisoners in these two types of establishments, or sixteen escapes for 10,000 prisoners – eight times more than in 2023. Not counting the 152 “young detainees” who escaped from correctional education establishments.

• Just before the Second World War, in 1938, the prison administration recorded twenty-three escapes for 18,000 prisoners, or thirteen escapes for 10,000 prisoners (6.5 times more than in 2023).

• The first report published after the war deplores the dizzying increase in escapes: 40 per 10,000 prisoners (twenty times more than today). “Never, obviously, did the prison administration have, before the war, so many dangerous prisoners to keep,” the administration justifies. Transportation [the removal of overseas prisoners, repealed in 1938] gradually relieved metropolitan establishments of the worst elements who now remain on our soil. »

• In the years that followed, escapes from closed establishments declined significantly: in 1970, there were only thirteen (involving fifteen people) for 29,549 prisoners (four for 10,000). But the development of semi-liberty placements since the 1950s has increased the possibilities for escapes: 190 prisoners take advantage of semi-liberty to escape.

• For fifty years, the trend has changed very little; according to available data, the number of escapes fluctuates from one year to the next, from a few to around thirty.

Recaptured after an escape at the end of 2022 from Périgueux prison, in Dordogne, an inmate had asserted his “right to escape” before the criminal court, reports Sud-Ouest. Without convincing. In France, escapes are punishable by three years of imprisonment and a fine of 45,000 euros and five years and a fine of 75,000 euros if they are carried out with violence, break-in or corruption.

However, such a “right to escape” is recognized in some Northern European countries: in Belgium or Switzerland, for example, the aspiration to freedom is considered a natural disposition of human beings which cannot be legally opposed to them. An escape is not punished if no other crime or misdemeanor is committed during the escape. Which is rare, but not impossible: In 2019, when the Dutch Ministry of Justice was proposing to make escaping punishable, it mentioned the example of an inmate who was released from prison hiding in a trash can: without violence, without corruption, without theft… so nothing could be legally attributed to him.

France is the ninth country in Europe with the most escapes in relation to its prison population (734 in 2021 for 69,964 prisoners). In absolute value, it is even France which has the most.

However, the escape data transmitted to the Council of Europe and compiled in its annual report on the prison population are calculated by national administrations, with incarceration methods and definitions of escape varying from one country to another. France transmits the total number of escapes, regardless of the form they took.

The prison administration’s data office, constrained by statistical secrecy, does not communicate escape methods or the establishments from which prisoners fled because this information could make it possible to individually identify prisoners.

The response from the Ministry of Justice to a question asked in the Senate at the end of 2015 nevertheless allows us to know a little more: of the twenty-four escapes since detention in 2014, eight took place from remand centers, two from detention centers, one from a juvenile establishment, thirteen from centers for modified sentences or semi-liberty centers.

The press coverage of certain escapes in recent months also gives us some indications of the techniques adopted: on the night of October 1st to 2nd, two inmates from the Quiévrechain juvenile prison (North) “made each other belle” by sawing through the bars of their cell, then escaping using woven sheets. At the end of June, a man incarcerated in Fleury-Mérogis (Essonne) escaped using a basket installed for work. In September, two detainees from the Eysses detention center (Lot-et-Garonne) took advantage of a sports session to escape through a hole in the fence, when, a few days later, an “acrobat” climbed the roofs of the Charleville-Mézières remand center, in the Ardennes, to find freedom.

By the exceptional means implemented and by the popular imagination that they mobilized, certain escapes had a considerable impact. In 2001, Francis Mariani, Pierre-Marie Santucci and Maurice Costa fled from Borgo prison (Upper Corsica) with the blessing of their guards: they had false faxes sent from the Ajaccio judge of liberties requesting their lifting of imprisonment, thus deceiving the prison administration. In 2003, a heavily armed commando stormed the Fresnes remand center (Val-de-Marne), opened fire on the watchtowers and entered the prison with explosives to free the robber Antonio Ferrara, the “king of beauty.”

The helicopter escape of Rédoine Faïd in 2018 is the last of its type to date in France. But far from being the first. Since 1981, and the escape of Gérard Dupré and Daniel Beaumont from Fleury-Mérogis, there have been seventeen air escapes in France. In the 1990s and 2000s, helicopter escapes took place almost every year.

Some of these escapes have gone down in history: in 1986, Michel Vaujour escaped from La Santé prison in Paris using a helicopter piloted by his wife. Pascal Payet escaped twice by helicopter, from the Aix-Luynes penitentiary center (Bouches-du-Rhône) in 2001, then from the Grasse remand center (Alpes-Maritimes) in 2007, after having time organized the escape by air of three detainees in Luynes (Indre-et-Loire) in 2003.

This epidemic of escapes through the skies forced the State to sign, in 2007, a protocol for the prevention of escapes by helicopter with aircraft operators. Anti-aircraft nets were also gradually installed in prison yards. Following Redoine Faïd’s escape in 2018, the then Minister of Justice, Nicole Belloubet, also asked Google to blur aerial views of prisons.