Hi everyone, I hope you’re having a great day!

You know who isn’t having a great day? Prison officials. They are struggling this week! Let me tell you why.

An innovation no one is happy about

Let’s start by introducing the problem.

He’s notably known for the home invasion of a famous chef and he is suspected of being the leader regarding the home invasion of Paris Saint-Germain’s former goalkeeper, Gianluigi Donnarumma, committed in 2023.

Now, he’s also known for introducing a new way to escape a French prison! On March 7th, 2026, a couple of his friends arrived at the Villepinte prison disguised as police officers and presented to the prison guards a fake warrant saying that they needed to take Ganito to the police station for an interrogation. The guards didn’t see anything wrong with the warrant or the “officers” so they handed over their man, and everybody left with a pep in their step.

In France, an interrogation can last 48h so it’s only after two days that the guards realized that they had been bamboozled. They immediately notified the police, who realized that they had already caught Ganito’s accomplices!

Ilyas Kherbouch is still at large, and was sentenced in absentia to 6 years in prison in another burglary case on March 12th. Considering that in France escaping prison with accoomplices comes with a 10-year sentence when you get caught, I almost would be open to letting him celebrate his birthday outside cause after that he’ll be celebrating his birthdays with a tuna can and a prayer for a while.

Even if prison officials are stressed out (and a bit humiliated) at the moment, they can at least find a little comfort in the fact that they managed to stop another (much worse) convict from escaping this week.

A gang leader stopped in extremis

When Ganito happily walked out of the Villepinte prison with his friends, another guy was planning his own escape, except it didn’t go as planned.

Gabriel had been transferred to the Vendin-le-Vieil high-security prison during the summer of 2025, and had started making calls a few weeks after his arrival. He had told authorities that he was calling his lawyer, but the officers ended up noticing that when he dialed the lawyer’s number, the call was transferred to his friends. After a while, they realized that Gabriel and his accomplices were planning an escape, that they would accomplish during his transfert to the courthouse for his trial, which starts on March 23rd. At the same time, police officers were investigating the whole gang, so they killed two birds with one stone and arrested a total of 46 people, including the lawyer, on March 9th.

With these arrests, we surely avoided another disaster, as French people still remember Mohamed Amra’s escape in May 2024. Amra had been broken out of a prison truck during a transfer by his accomplices, who killed two guards, Fabrice Moello and Arnaud Garcia, in the process. Amra was caught after 9 months on the run, and is currently (and ironically) an inmate in the Vendin-le-Vieil prison.

Officials were surely happy about stopping Gabriel’s escape, but they joy was short-lived, as they realized the next day that Ganito is missing.

And now, the million-euro question: why are French criminals so easily breaking out of prison, putting France at the 9th place for most prison breaks in Europe?

A system struggling to keep up

One thing we have to admit about criminals is that they can get pretty creative. And in French prisons, they have the perfect space to express that creativity, especially in their “now you see me, now you don’t” endeavors, for a variety of reasons:

1. French prisons are old: France has 187 jails and prisons, and a lot of them are old. When I say old, I mean 19th century type of old. Maintenance is thus complicated, causing problems regarding the inmates comfort and dignity, as well as great difficulties regarding the implementation of new security systems. Speaking of systems…
2. French officials can’t use a computer to save their lives: a lot of processes in the French prison system are overly reliant on paper. Paper that can be forged, especially now that AI is easily accessible. So yeah, with the right prompt, you can get your buddy out of jail. Of course, some prisons have integrated technology in their processes. But they are still years behind other countries.
3. French prison guards are exhausted and underpaid: understaffing is a big issue in the French prison system. Just in the Île-de-France region (where Paris is), the prisons are missing 800 guards, so the few that are working are often getting called back on their days off and have to handle several overcrowded floors (French prisons have an up to 140% occupancy rate) and at least one murder attempt a week per guard. And if you add the pay issue, you get overworked and easily corruptible guards. Only good things can come out of that, right?
4. We’re broke: the French government tends to be stingy with everything except the politicians’ salaries, but it’s especially stingy with the prison budget. It only spends around €135/inmate/day, which means two things
   • Inmates can’t live decently, which is a win according to some.
   • We can’t invest into making sure they don’t get out, which is a loss for everyone that isn’t a criminal.

In conclusion, French inmates are like that one friend you have that seems to be stuck dating a bum: stuck in a rotting house with an empty fridge and an emptier wallet, staring at the wall and about this 🤏close to realizing that with some determination and a bit of imagination, they can escape this situation.

Let me know what you think about this situation in the comments below or Reddit / Facebook / Instagram / Threads / Bluesky / Mastodon / Tumblr! Let’s hope Ganito is found soon and I’ll see you next time!