Paris (France) (AFP) – Faithful to his method, the designer Mathieu Sapin put his pencil for a year in prisons and other places of confinement for a comic strip which illustrates the “shocking” reality, according to him, of life behind bars in France.

Published on: 03/09/2026 - 11:55

“I didn’t know the prison environment at all,” admits Mathieu Sapin on the occasion of the release of “En liberté”, a 90-page album published by Dargaud.

He dove there in 2025 at the request of Dominique Simonnot, the general controller of places of deprivation of liberty (CGLPL), who heads an independent authority responsible for ensuring that “the rights inherent to human dignity are respected there”.

“I contacted Mathieu Sapin because I was looking for a simple and direct way to interest the general public in the question of confinement. And comics are a good tool for that,” she explains to AFP.

At 51, the author is a recognized specialist in immersive comics after having followed Gérard Depardieu, two Presidents of the Republic and the daily activity at the Ministry of the Interior for around ten years.

In these albums which have enjoyed great success in bookstores, he appears in the form of a curious and candid Tintin who reports with his naive and amused trait what he sees.

In one year, Mathieu Sapin accompanied Dominique Simonnot and members of his team to the cells of a police station near Paris, to the Bobigny court depot, to an establishment for minors in Marseille, to a psychiatric clinic, to a detention center and to the Fresnes remand center. That is to say a representative sample of the approximately 5,000 places of confinement existing in France.

In “En liberté”, he even recounts his experience of a few hours in the shoes of a voluntary prisoner in a cell of the Vendin-le-Viel penitentiary center (Pas-de-Calais), one of the most secure because drug traffickers are detained there.

"abandoned"

“The comic strip is a success because it shows a reality that is largely ignored by the French. And Mathieu Sapin did not seek to exploit it from a political or activist point of view,” says Dominique Simonnot, who will leave his post in October after a six-year mandate.

Upon discovering these establishments, the designer admits to having "been surprised by the contrast between the violence represented by confinement and routine and the hum of life in prison, where the days are all the same", he testifies.

But, according to him, "the most shocking" is "the state of the cells, often deplorable". Particularly in Fresnes, one of the most dilapidated and overcrowded prisons. One of his drawings shows a “not shy” rat which “wanders between the floors”.

The comic gives a voice to the staff, who often feel "abandoned", and reproduces the debates of the post-visit meetings around Dominique Simonnot, who says he is "ulcerated" by "the lack of political courage in the face of prisons".

As the presidential election approaches, Mathieu Sapin says he "realized" that addressing the subject of confinement was "problematic" for the candidates: "None of them want to say: 'we're going to put a lot of money into prisons because the situation is unacceptable. I'm committed to it, vote for me'".

After the promotion in the coming weeks of "En liberté" with Dominique Simonnot, the designer will publish at the end of the year a new album dedicated to the renovation site of Notre-Dame de Paris after the 2019 fire.

© 2026 AFP

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