I just finished reading Frank Abagnale’s CATCH ME IF YOU CAN (on which the movie is loosely based) and he describes his ordeal in French prison at Perpignan. Prisoners, even those there for non-violent offenses, were stripped naked and thrown into 5x5x5 cubes where they were kept in complete darkness, fed subsistence diets, not allowed to bathe or brush their teeth, had no human contact, and had only a bucket for sewage (which was rarely emptied, causing them to lie in their own waste when it overflowed). He remained there 6 months before being released, by which time he had double pneumonia, severe skin rashes and rotted teeth. He said that Italian prisons were rumored to be just as bad.
Is this true or totally exaggerated? Were French prisons really that bad in the 1970s? Do they still practice this? It seems as inhumane as anything the Nazis would have employed. (I have no sympathy for Abagnale being confined- I think he should have receive far more prison time than he got as he was guilty as sin and I didn’t find him the least bit charming- but the punishment seems to far exceed the crime.)