Drone deliveries in prison: drugs, mobile phones and merguez breach southern walls
The prisons of Perpignan, Montpellier, Béziers and Toulouse are facing daily increasing drone deliveries. Drugs, mobile phones and even inflatable swimming pools are reaching inmates despite jammers installed.
Drones above southern prisons: structured trafficking that nothing stops
Google News FR — Crime (fr) reports that drone deliveries destined for inmates have become professionalised to the point of daily defying the security systems of penitentiary establishments in southern France.
"There are drone deliveries every day and all night, 90 per cent of the time it's mobile phones and drugs being transported, but what are we waiting for before reacting? A tragedy? We're also finding more and more ceramic knives in packages and tomorrow it will be a 9mm and other firearms!" warns a guard at Perpignan prison.
This testimony illustrates the scale of a phenomenon affecting primarily the establishments in Béziers, Perpignan, Villeneuve-lès-Maguelone near Montpellier and Seysses in Toulouse, according to Cyril Jacquet, assistant regional delegate of the Unsa-Justice union. These sites concentrate both a large number of inmates and surroundings allowing drone pilots to isolate themselves a few hundred metres away in nature, out of reach of guards.
A network dismantled in Montpellier
Montpellier's judicial police recently put an end to the activities of a particularly structured network supplying several southern prisons. Investigators intervened at the moment when more than one kilogramme of cannabis and a dozen knives were about to be transported by air. The case confirms that organised crime has made prison droning a genuine market.
The goods transported go far beyond just narcotics. Cannabis in the first instance, cocaine "increasingly" according to Jacquet, mobile phones in large quantities, but also alcohol, fresh meat — sirloin steaks, merguez — raclette sets, fast-food deliveries, spices, gaming consoles, multimedia USB keys, SIM cards. Pierre Grousset, regional delegate to Unsa, also mentions "inflatable swimming pools which they then fill with water in their cell or decorations, we've had Marvel or Spiderman posters… Even in solitary confinement, they have things delivered to them."
Prices reflecting an organised market
Behind bars, the rates are unambiguous. According to a specialist intelligence source in Hérault, cocaine is negotiated at 100 euros per gramme, cannabis resin bars at 50 euros, and mobile phones between 500 euros for an old model and up to 1,500 euros for a recent device.
On the outside, recruitment takes place on social media. A delivery is remunerated on average at 350 euros for 400 grammes of goods. "When there's money to be made, it attracts and everything structures itself like drug trafficking," laments a specialist police officer.
Many attempt the operation and get caught. In mid-August, three young men and women were arrested near Villeneuve-lès-Maguelone, drone, drugs and a weapon in their possession, and sentenced to up to six months' custodial prison. Similar arrests took place in Nîmes during the summer, whilst in Carcassonne residents of the holding prison express their exasperation at the incessant nocturnal overflying.
Jammers circumvented by fishing line
The Ministry of Justice had announced at the end of 2025 an anti-mobile phone plan in prison and equipped several establishments with drone jammers. But the system is systematically circumvented: the drone remains above the protection dome, the package suspended some ten metres lower by fishing line. "Inmates guide it with their mobile phone or laser lights, whose use we quickly understood upon seizing them, all the way to the cell," explains Pierre Grousset.
Cyril Jacquet sums up the technological impasse: "As soon as there is a technology to counter drones, another appears." He specifies that certain devices are not affected by the jamming frequencies used and that the most sophisticated models support increasingly heavier loads.
For representatives of penitentiary staff unions, only one solution imposes itself concretely: installing aviaries on cell windows. A measure judged urgent, in a context of constrained budgets.
A guard close to retirement formulates the gravest warning: "Some drones can transport kilos and why not throw a bomb at a watchtower? It's a scourge."
Source: Google News FR — Crime (fr)