The National Assembly is preparing to vote on Tuesday the bill to increase the means of Justice of Eric Dupond-Moretti, who can count on the support of the right after having conceded the addition of 3,000 prison places to the plan already planned.
The solemn vote at first reading will take place at the end of the afternoon. After the broad green light from the Senate in mid-June, the LR deputies will support the text in “their very large majority”, announced the leader of the group Olivier Marleix.
“We obtained satisfaction” with the “3,000 additional prison places. This does not detract from the need to have firmer pure criminal policy texts tomorrow, but it is a condition”, he added. .
This programming bill will continue its parliamentary path in a joint joint committee at the start of the school year, where deputies and senators will try to establish a compromise text.
The government promises a Justice budget of nearly 11 billion euros in 2027, against 9.6 today, and the hiring in five years of 10,000 people, including 1,500 magistrates and 1,500 clerks.
Rather consensual, this bill took a more controversial turn at the Palais Bourbon, in the context of the riots which shook France, after the death of young Nahel killed by police fire.
The Republicans have shown their firmness even more on sovereign issues, and conditioned the vote on this law to the increase in the number of prison places, in addition to the 15,000 more places already planned by the government.
“Chiche”, ended up responding the presidential majority, supporting an amendment by LR party leader Eric Ciotti.
The objective – a total of 78,000 places in 2027 – seems very ambitious given the difficulties in building new places of detention. According to the Chancellery, 4,300 places will be operational by the end of 2023.
The Minister of Justice launched on this subject “a solemn, republican appeal, so that locally the attempts to obstruct” the construction of detention centers stop. Among elected officials, it is always “prison yes, but elsewhere”, pointed out Eric Dupond-Moretti.
The left denounces for its part “an obsession with everything prison”.
The riots have relegated to the background a yet sensitive subject of the bill: the possibility of remotely activating cell phones “snitches” in certain investigations.
The text provides in particular for being able to film or record without their knowledge, thanks to their connected devices (telephones, computers, etc.), people targeted by investigations for terrorism, serious crime and organized crime. This concerns “dozens of cases per year”. “We are far from the totalitarianism of 1984”, the novel by George Orwell, assures Eric Dupond-Moretti, a former criminal lawyer.
The technique is already used by the intelligence services, and without the approval of a judge, who will be, here, essential, hammers the Keeper of the Seals. It will also be prohibited for certain professions: magistrates, lawyers, parliamentarians, journalists, doctors.
But the left and defenders of public freedoms are alarmed at a “very dangerous slope”, an “intrusion into private life”, even an “authoritarian drift”.
The subject, like others, gave rise to electric passes between the rebels and the Minister of Justice.
After the riots, Eric Dupond-Moretti repeatedly renamed LFI “La France incendiary”, a term also used by the far right. And he willingly criticizes the one he calls the “Lider Maximo” of the Insoumis, Jean-Luc Mélenchon.
In the eyes of the presidential camp, the minister has rather scored points since the end of June. “The legal response to the riots was immediate. Boom, boom, boom, you steal a can of Red Bull, ten months? He comes out stronger. He needed it,” before the government reshuffle, he said. on within the Renaissance group.
On the ground, the Keeper of the Seals must face the anger of the clerks, who demand more consideration and recognition. Thursday, he stressed that an “agreement in principle” has been signed with the trade unions to frame the negotiations on remuneration and the status scheduled until October.
“It seems to me that from the moment we negotiate, we are no longer in the conflict,” he said. The bill endorses the hiring of 1,500 clerks in five years.
07/18/2023 14:30:32 – Paris (AFP) – © 2023 AFP