New data show France’s bursting prison system recently saw the highest number of prisoner suicides out of 45 European countries. Yet even outside jail French people are among the most likely in Europe the kill themselves.
A French prison has been ordered to provide halal meals for Muslim prisoners pending a definitive ruling on the latest issue to pit the country's secular tradition against Islamic practice.
French prison authorities may be ready to throw in the towel in their fight against mobile phones being sneaked in behind bars. The country’s top jailer has proposed allowing phones in prison saying it would help calm prisoners down.
A French court may have set a legal precedent this week when it decided that a frozen chicken constituted a weapon. A judge sentenced a man to a year in prison for swinging the poultry at his ex-partner.
Being locked up in a prison cell proved to be only a minor inconvenience for one French crook, who somehow managed to continue his life of crime despite being behind bars.
One French criminal's prison sentence just kept growing until he became the longest serving inmate in the country's history. On Friday he was finally freed after spending most of the last four decades behind bars. But what did he do to deserve it and what now?
The contentious issue of anti-white racism in France reared its head this week when a thug was handed a four-year jail sentence for attacking a white Frenchman. Perhaps the most surprising aspect of the case is the heritage of the convicted assailant.
Prison authorities at a jail in eastern France have been left with some explaining to do after two videos – one showing a dozen inmates doing a particularly enthusiastic version of the Harlem Shake – appeared on YouTube in recent days.
A French mother went on trial on Monday, charged with holding down her four-year-old son while his stepfather raped him repeatedly in a prison visiting room. The couple are accused of having covered the room's windows with bin bags to obstruct the view of guards.
A judge in France took the extraordinary step of freeing a prisoner near Paris this week, because wind and rain were blowing into his tiny cell, soaking him as he slept. The inmate’s lawyer called his living conditions “unacceptable".
A prisoner serving time for murder took a staff member hostage at the 'Maison Centrale' (high security prison) in Arles, southern France on Friday, before the episode ended peacefully within hours.
The European Court of Human Rights on Thursday ordered France to pay €10,000 in damages to an inmate in prison for murder, whom it said suffered "degrading and inhumane treatment" in a jail which has since closed.
French police were on a manhunt Sunday for a notorious armed robber who staged a dramatic prison break in
northern France after briefly taking several guards hostage.
A well-known robber with links to organised crime on Saturday blasted his way out of jail with explosives and took five staff hostage in northern France, officials said.
A man suspected of shooting his girlfriend's three-year-old daughter in a violent rage over the cleanliness of their flat has been charged with the toddler's murder, police said Thursday.
Prison guards have discovered 15 cannabis plants growing amongst the tomatoes in garden plots used by inmates at Saint-Martin-de-Ré prison in western France.
A French prisoner hacked off his own finger and sent it to Justice Minister Christiane Taubira in an attempt to accelerate his transfer to a different jail.
<p><span lang="EN-GB">Two twenty-year-old men have been given a six-month jail sentence for using Facebook to invite hundreds of people to a party and smashing up an empty house in the south of France.</span></p>
<p>Two brothers have been sentenced to eight months in jail after blocking an ambulance which was rushing a 7-year-old to hospital near Paris. One of the pair blamed his actions on the fact that he hadn't had his first coffee and cigarette of the day.</p>
<p>An inmate used at a Paris jail escaped during a basketball game organized by prison authorities - while new Justice Minister Christiane Taubira looked on.</p>
<p><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">A teac</span><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">her who grew cannabis and then offered a joint to a pupil has been jailed for six months.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">The head of a women's prison in Versailles was sent to jail himself on Wednesday for an affair with one of his inmates.</span></p>
<p>The European Court of Human Rights on Thursday condemned France for inhumane and degrading treatment of a prisoner detained in an evil-smelling, burnt-out cell.</p>
