Parlez-Moi D’Amour

File this under "Only in France":

France apparently operates Europe's nastiest prisons. The places are overcrowded and are deteriorating dramatically. Gangs form. We know what you are thinking: that this sounds a lot like the U.S., like the Richmond City Jail, for instance.

Here's la différence:

The Fleury-Mérogis prison dates to 1969 and was designed by a modernist architect famous once upon a time. Although the place lies among fields, it resembles those mass estates intended to remake the urban landscape. For several decades planners erected buildings for housing, business, worship, the arts, and, as we see, prisons that conformed to lofty social theories. The results often pleased critics and the granters of awards but infuriated those destined to live or work (or serve time) in them.

Some years ago a group of ex-prisoners decided to protest their treatment in the jug. They invaded and vandalized the offices not of the justice ministry or the French department of corrections but of Fleury-Mérogis' architect. Amis, that is what is known as Gallic style.