Is France too weak to stop the violent attacks on its prisons?

A wave of violence is sweeping France as gunmen attack the country’s prisons. In some cases, vehicles belonging to prison staff have been set alight and in other incidents bullets from AK47s were sprayed at the gates. In the eastern city of Nancy, a prison officer was threatened at his home.

The violence began on Sunday evening and is ongoing: overnight three vehicles were set ablaze outside Tarascon prison in the Côte d’Azur region, and a fire was started in an apartment where a prison guard lives close to Paris. Graffiti was also sprayed on the wall. No one has been hurt but the coordinated attacks, carried out the length and breadth of France, have shaken the Republic.

Gérald Darmanin, the Minister of Justice, visited a prison in Toulon on Tuesday, where thirteen bullet holes scarred the gates, and attributed the attacks to France’s powerful drug cartels.