Slow Death

For 85 years some of the world's most lurid, blood-curdling "true-story" prison tales have come out of experiences, real and embellished, gained in France's famed penal colony in French Guiana, on the northeast coast of South America. Horror stories deluxe have told of men working stark naked in the sizzling tropical jungle, of lust, greed, murder, homosexuality in prison cages crammed with killers, rapists, thieves. Other tales have told of years of maddening isolation in "bear pits" on one of the three Iles du Salut (variously translated as "Safety Isles" and "Isles of Salvation''), ten to twelve miles off the mainland.

France's unsentimental penologists have remained singularly unimpressed by these horror stories. Two years ago, however, France's Popular Front Government started to do something about the penal colony. Last week Premier Edouard Daladier by decree prescribed a slow death for it. No more prisoners are to be sent there, but on the other hand, none of the 5,000 there now will be repatriated. Since the convicts die at the rate of about 500 a year, it will take about ten years to liquidate the penal colony.

Most of French Guiana's chroniclers have followed a pat formula. The story usually starts with the teller being convicted of a felony. In a temporary prison at the citadel of St. Martin-de-Re, in the Bay of Biscay, the convict awaits the sailing of the plodding 3,800-ton "hellship" La Martiniere, formerly a German freighter, now outfitted with steel-girded cells and mutiny-suppressing hot-steam hose. Into her hold go Foreign Legion deserters, Algerian Spahis convicted of rape, French Indo-Chinese murderers, Circassian thieves, arch-crooks from Montmartre. The ship arrives in 50 or 60 days at St. Laurent, on the Maroni River dividing Surinam* and French Guiana, where after another brief internment, most convicts are assigned to a prison at Cayenne or Kourou or to any one of numerous jungle camps along the river.

Of the 5,000 prisoners in the colony 4,500 never leave the mainland. If the convict is considered incorrigibly dangerous, however, he may be sent to one of the Iles du Salut, high, rocky, mile-long Ile Royale, and there set at hard labor, perhaps even put in an isolated pit. If considered a mental case he may enter a madman's cell, on Ile St. Joseph. If he has been convicted of treason, he will probably be sent to live in a hut on the most famous of this trio of islands--the 34-acre, bleak Il du Diable, or Devil's Island. Not more than 25 traitors to France have generally inhabited Devil's Island at one time. Currently only five or six exiles live on the island. So publicized was the case of the first prisoner on Devil's Island, the martyred Captain Alfred Dreyfus, that the entire French Guiana penal colony commonly takes the name of the tiny island.

Because of swift currents and shark-infested waters, escape from Devil's Island--until 1895 a leper colony--is considered impossible, has never succeeded. From the mainland, however, escape in Small open canoes down the river, across mudbanks, finally to some distant friendly shore is not only possible but, judging from the number of successful attempts, a rigorous yet comparatively easy undertaking.

Main deterrent to escape is the difficulty of finding money to buy and outfit a canoe. A convict is able to make from 25 centimes (less than 1-c- to 1.5 francs a day, must save many years before he can hope to buy even enough food to last him on what is usually a ten or twelve-day open-ocean trip. Chief feature of a French sentence to Guiana is that it means just half of what it says. A seven-year sentence is really for 14 years--seven years at hard labor, seven years as a libere (freedman) confined to French Guiana. Any sentence for more than seven years is just a nice name for a life term, since the prisoner is then automatically condemned forever to the penal colony. It is usually the freedmen who escape.

Safest, nearest spot for convicts to head for is British-owned Trinidad, 600 miles from St. Laurent, where escaped convicts are now fed, hospitalized, sent on their way, treated like shipwrecked mariners. Althougn Britain and France have signed an extradition treaty, Trinidad Judge Charles Greenidge virtually nullified the treaty for Devil's Island criminals by freeing 13 escaped convicts on the almost impossible-to-fulfill technicality that extradition papers with full descriptions had to originate from the men's place of conviction, that French officials wanting to extradite men had to present strict evidence of where the crime took place. Since then Trinidad has enjoyed a regular escape season in late spring, when winds and sea are favorable. After being provided with clothing and temporary shelter and food to last 21 days, the convicts are taken 12 miles out to sea, are sent on with a "Good luck, but don't come back."

The Salvation Army has recently repatriated over 200 men who have served out their time. About 93,000 convicts have been sent to French Guiana since the penal colony was established in 1852. Some commentators have pictured the colony as a happy, carefree settlement. The French Guiana climate is always humid, with the temperature ranging from 68 to 90 degrees, with frequent trade winds from both southeast and northeast. Undeniable fact, however, is the large number of deaths, which each year has generally equaled the number of importations, as well as the large number of men of broken health and spirits who escape.

The open sore if not outright scandal that was long French Guiana made little impression on successive French governments until Leon Blum became Premier. Then the penal colony was described as a failure. The escaped convicts were said to reflect on Frenchmen everywhere. Explains the bill finally adopted: "Such a situation cannot be prolonged without doing injury to the prestige of France."

*The Netherlands Government recently notified the U. S. Post Office Department that Dutch Guiana would hereafter be called only Surinam. Other changes: Dutch East Indies to Netherlands Indies, the Dutch West Indies to Curacao. The word "Dutch" has long been taboo in The Netherlands.

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