Baumettes prison (also known as the Centre pénitentiaire de Marseille) is a prison in the 9th arrondissement of Marseille. The prison is named after the district of Les Baumettes where it was constructed between 1933 and 1939. This area was outside the city but has been absorbed as the city expanded.
The prison covers some 30,000 m² and contains 1,380 cells housing approximately 1,700 prisoners, mostly men, around a quarter of whom are not French. The site includes a unit for juvenile offenders, another for female prisoners, and a prison hospital.
The Council of Europe has condemned the unsanitary and overcrowded prison as the worst detention centre in France. After Álvaro Gil-Robles, former human right commissioner of the Council of Europe, visited the prison in September 2005, he was "shocked by the living conditions ... the inmates' living conditions are on the borderline of the acceptable, and on the borderline of human dignity".[1].
A 10-year renovation project, proposed in 1999, did not start until 2006. The project will cost approximately €133 million and should bring the prison up to modern standards of hygiene, safety and security. The first phase, from 2006 to 2010, involves renovations to the main entrances, watchtowers, visiting rooms, and the construction of a new mess hall and workshops. The prisoners' accommodation will be renovated from 2009.
Three of the last four executions in France took place in Baumettes: Ali Benyanès in 1973, Christian Ranucci on 28 July 1976 and the last, Hamida Djandoubi, on 10 September 1977.