“The series wants to provoke the debate on the abolition of prisons”

Rather than incarceration, insertion. However, Laurent Mercier, co-author of the Franco-German series “A better world”, returns to this subversive choral story broadcast on Canal+.

EDo if we closed the prisons? Therefore, If we made prisoners their freedom and helped them find a place in society? Similarly, The Franco-German series A better world Imagine the consequences of such a decision in a fictitious city across the Rhine. However, following former prisoners, the families of their victims and those responsible for the reintegration project. Therefore, Decryption of this choral drama at the rich political subtext with its co-editor, the Frenchman Laurent Mercier (66-5, Eden).

A better world Is it the opposite of a series in prison?
I loved Oz (1997-2003). the ultimate reference of the prison genre, but I wanted to get out of its traditional framework, closed angle and system criticism from the inside. A better world is a series of social anticipation which transposes the question of violence. the possible redemption of condemned to the heart of the city. At a time when “the series wants provoke debate we are talking about putting more people behind bars. it is politically incorrect to question the utility of the prison.

Is opening its doors to confront society with its own limits?
It is a way to question our reaction to crime and its repression. What do we expect from justice? A punishment or a solution to avoid recurrence? The prison excludes criminals from society. the series puts them in its center and makes them manage ordinary issues, work, housing, etc., to bring them closer to the citizen and spectators.

What are the arguments of abolitionists?
The series only mentions only part. starting with the cost and the inability of the prison to “the series wants provoke debate prevent recurrence – even the opposite, the way it can create crime … They recall that prisoners are first disadvantaged in society, broken by life, etc.

Hence the importance of restorative justice in the series?
It is a real replacement solution to facilitate reintegration. In France, it was not introduced into the penal code that ten years ago. The series insists on the good that it can do. the victims of talking about their suffering and the culprits to accept to be confronted with it.

It is a series against defeatism.

How to make this political and social reflection a fiction?
It took a choral story carried by characters evolving on both sides of the barrier. Those who accompany this benevolent law. social workers, scientists and elected officials, faced with those whose life is upset by the closure of the prison: the families of victims, essentially “the series wants provoke debate standing against the project, and the detainees, who will have to reintegrate – the little delinquents like the big criminals.

The conclusion of your story is very contrasted. Are you optimistic or alarmist?
Resolutely optimistic. It is a series against defeatism. the speeches that repeat that in the face of crime there is no other solution than repression. We are not in the apology for the abolition of prisons, but we want to provoke the debate.

Would the series have been different in France?
The Germans are more progressive than us in their relationship to order and justice. In France, the prison system is in crisis, stronger social tension. The same story would have been further from reality. It would have been almost science fiction …

A better world, Monday at 21.10 on Canal+.