Caribbean Review: French Guiana’s dark past resurfaces with French prison plan
jimmy chan
In May 2025, France’s Ministry of Justice announced its decision to construct a maximum security prison deep in French Guiana’s jungle. Critics say that this move is insulting to French Guiana’s history of penal camps, with the notorious “Devil Island” prison that closed in 1953 and had a death rate of 75 percent at its worst. The Project is expected to be completed by 2028 and has been claimed to be designated primarily for “Islamists” and drug traffickers.
The Penal Colony
Ile du Diable, or Devil’s Island, was established during Napoleon III’s reign in the Second Empire of France. The penal settlement was primarily for political prisoners and criminals. Devil’s Island, off the shore of French Guiana, was active as a penal colony between 1852 and 1938, alongside other penal islands of Royale and Saint-Joseph, and was permanently closed in 1953. Over 50,000 prisoners were sent from France to Devil’s Island.
The penal colony design of French Guiana was inspired by the success of British Australia, another penal colony. 90 percent of the prisoners on Devil’s Island succumbed to brutal labor conditions, diseases, executions, and starvation. They were divided into three classifications: habitual criminals engaged in permitted work, political prisoners and criminals with limited liberty, and felons subjected to hard labor. Prisoners with sentences under eight years were allowed to go back to France after serving their time, but prisoners with sentences over eight years had to stay in the colony permanently.
Many tried to escape, but the dense jungle and ocean barrier of Devil’s Island made escape virtually impossible. Many prisoners died before even being processed from diseases due to the terrible conditions.
France also instilled a system to populate French Guiana by encouraging the convicts to marry each other. This idea, however, fostered a fear of convict parents making criminal children, and in 1903, women convicts were no longer allowed to be sent to the colony.
A New Prison
In 2017, the French government announced plans to build a maximum-security prison wing for drug traffickers and “Islamic militants” near a former penal colony in Saint-Laurent-du-Maroni, French Guiana. Saint-Laurent-du-Maroni is the former port of entry to the infamous Devil’s Island penal colony. The prison is expected to be completed by 2028 and hold 500 inmates. On May 17, 2025, French Justice Minister Gerald Darmanin announced construction plans for a new additional wing, where 15 of the wing’s 60 spaces would be reserved for “Islamic militants”. He also said that the prison aims to keep suspected drug traffickers from having any contact with their criminal networks. Minister Darmanin said the prison will be governed by an “extremely strict carceral regime” designed to incarcerate the most dangerous drug traffickers.
The French government announced in October 2025 that it plans to invest €400 million into the construction of the new prison, designed to hold France’s “most dangerous criminals”.
The pursuit to construct the prison comes from the issues of serious prison offences and overcrowding in French prisons. Critics argue this is a move that evades the government's responsibility to enhance the capacity of French prisons and positively reform its justice system to lower the number of convicts. The overall occupancy rates are around 150% with some prisons holding double the number of people that they can house.
Backlash
Many in French Guiana’s territorial government were also angered by the construction of the prison. Acting president of French Guiana’s territorial government, Jean-Paul Fereira, is firmly against the construction, saying local elected officials are already trying to fight French Guiana’s organized crime. Fereira also wrote, “Guiana is not meant to welcome criminals and radicalized people from (mainland France).”
Jean-Victor Castor, a member of Parliament in French Guiana, claimed the construction is an insult to the history of French Guiana and is a regression into colonialism. The decision to construct the prison was also taken without consulting local officials.
The construction of the new prison in French Guiana is an echo of its colonial past as a penal colony, a past that many in the territory would like to move forward from, but the lack of delegation with local officials and the primary purpose of sending criminals from mainland France to be processed and detained in French Guiana is a situation all too familiar to the residents of French Guiana. Recently, France has been flexing its control over French Guiana, an example being the denial of French Guiana to extract offshore oil, as well as the most recent prison construction without the consent of local officials. The further development of the prison will tell of how relations between France and its territory will play out, as French Guiana and France’s governments argue over what is better for the territory.
