Éric Dupond-Moretti will present his justice reform project at first reading this Tuesday, July 18. The Keeper of the Seals will need the votes of the Republicans to have this text adopted, which conditioned their votes on an increase in prison places. On the other hand, this text does not appeal to the left, which opposes “all-prison”. Here are the highlights of this project.
The orientation and programming bill for justice aims to increase the ministry’s budget from 9.6 billion euros in 2023 to nearly 11 billion by 2027.
It ratifies the hiring of 10,000 people, including 1,500 magistrates and 1,500 clerks in five years.
At the request of the LRs, the National Assembly added a target of 3,000 additional prison places to the plan of 15,000 places planned by the government by 2027. If the ambitious target was achieved, France would count approximately 78,000 places at the end of the five-year term. It currently has 73,699 detainees for 60,562 operational places, an overall prison density of 121.7%.
The text authorizes the government to rewrite by ordinance the code of criminal procedure in order to clarify its drafting. This code has grown from 800 to more than 2,400 articles since it came into force in 1959. A committee of experts is in charge of this project, launched in January and which should last at least a year and a half. The minister has pledged that the new code will not come into force until it has been ratified by Parliament.
In cases of terrorism, delinquency and organized crime, the cameras or microphones of telephones, computers and other devices may be connected remotely without the knowledge of the persons concerned to capture sound and images. The remote activation of devices for geolocation would be authorized for offenses punishable by at least five years of imprisonment.
The reform simplifies certain rules of procedure: extended night searches in criminal matters, new rights for people placed under the intermediate status of assisted witness, videoconference for the medical examination in the event of extension of police custody.
In nine to twelve jurisdictions and for four years, the courts of economic activities will be tested, with expanded jurisdiction compared to the commercial courts, intended in particular for farmers. A contribution for economic justice will be implemented in these new courts in order to encourage recourse to an amicable resolution of the dispute.
The text establishes specialized centers in the fight against intra-family violence in the courts. The Senate has scheduled them to be operational no later than January 1, 2024.
The judge of freedoms and detention will have the possibility of refocusing solely on criminal matters. At the discretion of the courts, the president of the court may decide to transfer his civil powers – keeping foreigners in an irregular situation in administrative detention, forced hospitalizations – to another judge of the court.
To enhance its attractiveness, access routes to the judiciary will be reformed and opened up to new profiles. The reform provides for the creation of a new function, that of legal attachés, to help magistrates in their tasks. Civil servants or contract workers, they will replace the current legal assistants, with a more precarious status and without initial training. In the penitentiary, contract agents may be recruited to assist the guards and thus alleviate the recruitment crisis.
The Assembly, through a coalition of opposition parties, rejected at this stage a measure in the bill which provided for the removal of the prior authorization of a judge in the context of wage garnishments. Wage garnishment allows a person, to whom an employee owes money, to obtain payment of the amount owed to him. The employer must allocate part of the employee’s salary to the repayment of the debt.
The reform planned to reform the planned procedure with the abolition of the prior authorization of the enforcement judge. And it entrusted the application of the seizure to the commissioners of justice (ex-bailiffs), instead of the registry of the judicial court, with control by the judge a posteriori. The left had criticized a threat to the most vulnerable. The government hopes for a reintroduction of the measure during the joint committee between deputies and senators.
