Manifesto of the GIP Manifesto rometype, signed by J.-M Domenahc, Michel Foucault, P. Vidal Naquet, read by Michel Foucault and distributed to the press on rh 8 February 1972 in the church of Saint Bernard of Montparnasse during the stopping of the hunger strike by the imprisoned militants of Gauche Proletarienne and their support committee. M.Foucualt had to appear before a court for the printing of leaflets without mention of the printer.

After the disbanding on the 27 May 1970 of the movement of Maoist inspiration called GP, numerous militants were jailed for reconstitution of a disbanded league. A crime that included the mere sale of the newspaper La Cause du Peuple. In September 1970, then once again in January 1971, the jailed activists undertook a hunger strike to be recognized as political prisoners, a status that implied certain rights of meeting/association. The wished also to draw attention to the prison system. D. Defert, who participated in the little cell charged with preparing politically the trial of the imprisoned, proposed to M. Foucault to drive/lead a commissio0n of inquiry into the prisons as there had been on the health of juveniles during the popular court of Lens, and of which JP Sartre had been the prosecutor. A history of the prison being the logical and declared follow-up to L’Histoire de la Folie (Madness and civilization), M.Foucault accepted the project with enthusiasm, but transformed the idea of a commission of inquiry, a judicial term, int6o Information Group, which insisted both on a collective experience of thought (reflection) and a prise de parole seizing of speech by the detainees. It was also a matter of mobilizing specific intellectuals: magistrates, doctors, social workers… and to decompartmentalizing them through the production of information at the side of the detainees: the investigators become (are) the investigated. Thus was born the GIP, the Prison Information Group. The effects were several. One of the first was the entry into the p[risons by the daily press and radio stations, up until that time forbidden, and to problematize a mythology of the political discourse of the proletariat and lumpenproletariat. This external support encouraged a movement of revolt which shook thirty five establishments, some of which were practically sacked in the winter of 1971-72. The GIP contributed to a shifting the emphasis of political activism after 1970. On its model was created the GIS, or Health Information Group, desegregating doctors and sick, the GIA or Asylum Information Group, the GISTI, or Information and Support group for immigrant Workers. Foucault delayed for two years the writing of his book “on punishments” so that detainees could not assume that he had only a speculative self-interest in their activism whose basis he modified. (laquelle en modifia les bases).

None of us is sure of escaping prison. Less so today than ever. On our everyday life, police control tightens: in the street and on the roads; around foreigners and youth: crimes of opinion have reappeared: anti-drug initiatives (mesures) increase arbitrary power. We are under the sign of “police custody”. We are told that the law is overwhelmed. We see it. But what if it was the police who overwhelmed it? We are told that the prisons are overcrowde3d. But what if it was the population who were over-imprisoned? Little information is published about the prisons; it is one of the hidden regions of our social system, one of the black boxes of our lives. We have the right to know, we want to know. That is why, with magistrates, lawyers, journalists, doctors, psychologists, we have formed the Prison Information Group.

We propose to make known what is the prison: who goes there, how and why one goes there, what happens there, what is the life of prisoners and, equally, of the surveillance personnel, what are the buildings, the food, the hygiene, how do the internal rules function, medical; examinations, the workshops: how does one get out and what it is, in our society, to be one of those who has got out.

This information is not in the official reports that we will find. We will ask it of those who have, on whatever account, experience of the prison or a relationship to it. We ask them to get in contact with us and communicate to us what they know. A questionnaire has been drafted that can be requested. As soon as they are sufficiently numerous, the results of it will be published.

It is not for us to suggest a reform. We want only to make known the reality. And to make it known immediately, almost day by day; because time is short. It’s a question of alerting public opinion and keeping it alert. We will try to use every means of communication (jinofr4mation): dailies, weeklies, monthlies. We thus appeal to every possible organ.

Lastly, it is good to know what threatens us; but it is also good to know how to defend oneself. One of our first tasks will be to publish a little ‘Manual of the Perfect Arrest, doubled obviously as a Notice to the Arrester.

All those who wish to inform, be informed or to participate in the work can write to GIP: 285, rue de Vaugirard, Paris -XV

On Prisons From J’Accuse, 15 March 1971, p.26 The Prison Information Group has just launched its first inquiry (investigation). It’s not a sociologists’ investigation. It’s a matter of giving voice to those who have an experience of prison. Not that they need to be helped to “become conscious”; the consciousness of oppression is there, perfectly clear, knowing very well who enemy is. But the current system refuses them the means of expressing themselves, of organizing themselves.

We want to break the double isolation in which detainees find themselves locked up: through our inquiry, we want them to be able to communicate amongst themselves, transmitting what they know and speaking to each other from prison to prison, and from cell to cell. We wish that they address the population and that the population speaks to them. It is necessary that these experiences, these isolated revolts turn themselves into common knowledge and coordinated practice.

Groups are forming, bringing together ex-detainees, prisoners’ families, layers, doctors, activists, all those who have decided to no longer tolerate the current prison regime. It is up to them to launch in the country, and in Paris, new inquiries, to gather and to distribute information, to imagine new modes of action. The prisons must no longer be left in peace, anywhere.

The hunger strike of last January forced the press to speak. Let’s take advantage of that opening (gap); may the intolerable, imposed by force and silence, cease to be accepted. Our investigation is not done so as to accumulate knowledge but to nurture our intolerance and make of it an active intolerance. Let’s become intolerant regarding prisons, the law, the hospital system, psychiatric practice, military service etc.

As first act of this , a questionnaire is regularly distributed at the gates of certain prisons and to all those who can know or who want to act.

D&E 174-176.

Inquest Survey