Prison: Richard Malpas recounts his experience in Schrassig

“I found in prison more solidarity, humanity and empathy than in the professional environment, where you are never safe from a stab on the back”. Richard Malpas (assumed name) does not go there by four paths to describe his experience in Schrassig, in the late 2000s, when he was sentenced to three years in prison, including a firm year, for drug trafficking.

Then aged 21, the Luxembourg, born in Belgium, said that he had experienced his arrest “as a deliverance”, after years of depression, alcoholism and drug use. These twelve months spent in Schrassig and the infernal gear that led him, Richard Malpas tells them in “P2, a year in Luxembourg prisons”, a story that transpires sincerity. “I have the impression that it was in prison that I became an adult,” he asserts among other truths.

Richard Malpas recounts prison overcrowding, ordinary racism and xenophobia (“the guards cut hot water with undocumented migrants, to humiliate them”), isolation, with a single hour of daily walking and barely an hour of weekly sport. He paints the portrait of several of his fellow prisoners, Maghreb, Africans, Belgians or Portuguese, explains the moments of sharing, the encouragement that both lavish to give themselves courage.

The one who was briefly corporal-chief in the Luxembourg army, at the age of 17, also tells the five months spent in detoxification cure after release, “to treat my vices”, reintegration in the financial sector in Luxembourg, after diplomas obtained during the evening, “an era when I also worked on weekends, to reimburse my legal costs”.

Today appeased and 38 years old, Richard Malpas still works in the financial sector in the Grand Duchy. He finished writing a second work, which should be released at the beginning of 2026. It will still be a question of prison universe, but the author will extend his spectrum: “I also explain how we slip into crime sometimes without realizing it. I evoke the reintegration, an obstacle course, and poverty in Luxembourg, which we speak too little. ”

The author always promises to give the floor to those who, “often far from being monsters”, were not able, at some point, to overcome the trials that life has placed on their way.