No jokes, please, about that extraordinary bicycle race, the Penal Tour de France, that is wending its way around the country in a pack composed of convicts, prison officials and policemen.

Hold the wheezes about how, if a low-ranked rider wins, it will be highway robbery, or, as a tumultuous sprint to the finish develops, somebody will get away with murder. Nothing about how, instead of a yellow jersey, the leader will wear one with black and white stripes.

Above all, no references to a breakaway, in French an echappée or, shudder, an escape. Well, maybe one. It comes from Daniel, a 48-year-old prisoner in Nantes, whose last name was not given when the Tour de France Pénitentiaire was announced there last month.

“It's a kind of escape for us, a chance to break away from the daily reality of prison,” he said, according to Reuters. “If we behave well, we might be able to get released earlier, on probation.”