La Roquette Prisons

It is the architect Hippolyte Lebas, creator of the Notre-Dame-de-Lorette church, who is chosen to carry out this project.

He was inspired by the plans of the Panopticon by Jeremy Bentham1, to erect a hexagonal prison, inaugurated on 11 September 1830.

It is simple: an enclosure wall surrounding a square building, itself pierced by a central courtyard.

The contrast will be all the more flagrant as the new remand center will be built on land facing the previous penitentiary centre.

It is there, in fact, that future convicts will wait before their departure for the Ile de Ré, then for Cayenne or Nouméa.