Editing Jacques Mesrine (section)

==Return to France: 1972–1977==
By the end of 1972, Mesrine had returned to France, where he resumed robbing banks.  On 5 March 1973, during an argument with a cashier in a coffee bar, Mesrine brandished a revolver and seriously injured a police officer who tried to intervene. He was arrested 3 days later.  In May, he was sentenced to 20 years imprisonment&nbsp;– which, considering his record, was lenient for the time and place&nbsp;– to be served at ''[[La Santé Prison|La Santé]]'' [[Prison#Security levels|maximum security prison]] where escape was thought to be impossible.  In a plan likely formulated even before his arrest,  Mesrine took a judge, who sentenced him on another matter in the past, hostage with a revolver (recovered from the courthouse lavatory where it had been hidden by an accomplice) and escaped. After being at large for four months, he was arrested in his new Paris apartment on 28 September 1973, on information supplied by an associate who wanted a reduced sentence. Mesrine was returned to ''[[La Santé Prison|La Santé]]'' where he covertly wrote and smuggled out an autobiography, titled ''L'Instinct de Mort'' ("Death Instinct"),<ref>L'Instinct de Mort, Editions Lattes, 1977(French)(First publishing)</ref><ref>L'instinct de Mort, Flammarion Quebec, 2008.(French)</ref> in which he claimed to have committed upwards of forty [[murder]]s, a number thought by some to be a considerable exaggeration.  The appearance of Mesrine's book resulted in France passing a "[[Son of Sam law]]", designed to stop criminals profiting from the publication of their crimes.