Question 14721 — overseas

Summary

Ms. Mereana Reid Arbelot draws the attention of the Keeper of the Seals, Minister of Justice, to the persistent inadequacies of State action in French Polynesia in the face of the development of international drug trafficking. The Faa'a-Nuutania penitentiary center had, as of January 1, 2024, a prison density of 142.1%, with 162 people detained for 114 places, illustrating a situation of structural overpopulation in a territory with limited prison capacity. This pressure is aggravated by the presence of around fifteen Ecuadorian detainees involved in international networks, who remain incarcerated locally due to a lack of effective transfer mechanisms to their State of origin. This inertia leads French Polynesia to assume, alone and permanently, the responsibility for their detention. Even more serious, this situation is now producing effects operational concerns on the ground. Consistent information indicates an adaptation of the strategies of control services, with certain foreign traffickers no longer being systematically arrested due to the material impossibility of incarcerating them in acceptable conditions. Such a development would pose a real risk of weakening the rule of law in this strategic Pacific territory. In the same Time, incarceration in French Polynesia does not always constitute a sufficient deterrent for the most structured profiles of drug trafficking, some integrating the sentence as an economic risk inherent to their activity. Conversely, the removal to high security penitentiary establishments located in mainland France, by introducing a geographical, social and logistical break, is likely to significantly strengthen the deterrent effect of the sentence. However, Law No. 2025-532 of June 13, 2025, aimed at getting France out of the drug trafficking trap, specifically provided for the creation of secure prison structures adapted to these profiles, as well as reinforced centralization of the criminal response. However, these devices are not accessible in French Polynesia, which concretely limits their operational scope for this territory. In this context, the maintaining detainees in French Polynesia, whether foreigners or Polynesians involved in structured networks, appears to be out of step with the objectives pursued by the legislator. She therefore asks him in what way the Government plans, on the one hand, to strengthen the mechanisms for transferring foreign detainees to their State of origin and, on the other hand, to resort more systematically to transfers to the metropolis of Polynesian prisoners most involved in drug trafficking, in order to guarantee the effectiveness and dissuasive nature of the criminal response.

Machine translation from French. The official text remains authoritative.

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