His face, in tears, made the rounds of the media and social networks. In a video filmed on June 29 before the Evry court, Karine expresses her distress after the conviction of her rapist by the Essonne Assize Court. Tried for two rapes and a repeated sexual assault committed in 2016, the man has just been sentenced to six years in prison, four of which are accompanied by a probationary sentence, and two firm – but convertible. To judge this sentence, the Assize Court notably retained the family situation and the professional integration of this taxi driver, as a couple and father of a 2-year-old child. Arguments that Karine rejects with emotion in her speech. “It’s not fair, it’s not how we should do justice,” she is indignant. Since then, the Evry-Courcouronnes prosecutor’s office has chosen to appeal this decision. But while the accused had been sentenced to a one-year suspended prison sentence for sexual assault on a minor only a few months before crossing Karine’s path, the case raises the questions, often debated, of the meaning of the sentence and the supposed laxity of justice.
According a report of the CSA polling institute for the Senate dating from September 2021, 69% of respondents already believed a year ago that justice is “completely or rather lax”, 68% that it is “completely or rather opaque”, and 94% that the institution is “completely or rather slow”. No less than 49% of those questioned also considered that the penalties for murder and assassination are “fairly badly or very badly adapted”, as are those for financial crimes (65%), crimes and crimes of a sexual nature (66%) or acts of petty crime (70%). These figures, which bear witness to an ever-increasing distrust of citizens towards the judicial institution, are also included in the report of the Estates General of Justice (EGJ), given to Emmanuel Macron – by pure coincidence of timing – two days after the broadcast of Karine’s video on social networks. After six months of consultation, the conclusions of the document thus depict, bluntly, a judicial institution which is “at a breaking point”.
But against the current of the feelings of the French, the report also points to a “criminal response and increasing severity” of justice, as well as a “recourse to significant pre-trial detention”. Immediate appearance procedures represent, for example, 18% of judgments rendered in criminal matters currently – against 13% in 2012 -, while persons sentenced to a prison term of less than one year still represented 26.1% of the total. prisoners on October 1, 2021. The International Observatory of Prisons (OIP) reminds L’Express that long sentences have also “sharply increased” in recent years: the number of people imprisoned serving a prison sentence of at least five years has more than doubled in 40 years, from “less than 6,000 in 1980 to nearly 15,000 in 2020”. Faced with this observation, and faced with the growing number of prison overcrowding, the EGJ committee considers “that a response based solely on detention […] cannot constitute an adequate response”, and insists on the “efforts in penitentiary matters” which must be undertaken to “give meaning to the sentence in the service of effective reintegration”. Its twelve members thus declare themselves in favor of a reduction of “short prison sentences” which, according to them, do not allow “neither to act on the behavior of the person, nor to prepare for his reintegration”, and recommend to reinforce the reception capacities in an open environment.
Contradictory injunction
Within the Union of Magistrates’ Unions (USM), this contradictory injunction has long been pointed out: “There is an almost schizophrenic reasoning from the legislator who asks us to adjust the sentences as much as possible, while other laws driven by strong social demand aim to toughen penalties,” argues Cécile Mamelin, vice-president of the union. The magistrate particularly regrets that imprisonment is still seen “by public opinion and certain political forces” as the only valid sentence. “We still hear far too much this cliché according to which a person who does not go to prison is not punished”, she laments, judging that the sentences must be “adapted to the facts committed and to the personality of the individual. “. Asked about the possible failures of these sentence adjustments, Cécile Mamelin wants to be clear. “They exist, of course. But I think you can never regret not having put someone in prison, because it means that there were reasons in their file to avoid incarceration. He is happy that the principle of freedom remains, like that of the presumption of innocence, that which prevails in our country”.
“But the root of the problem, and what the French feel, moreover, is that we do not always have the possibility of adjusting these sentences correctly,” said Kim Reuflet, president of the Syndicat de la magistrature. . In some cases, this judge also points to the “dilemma of magistrates”, who would sometimes have “no other choice” than to pronounce short prison sentences. “However, we know that the latter do not promote reintegration and are not an effective means of combating recidivism, but we do it by default, for lack of time and means, such as the number of places in semi- freedom for example”. On the question, the judges are nevertheless not unanimous. “France is one of the rare countries where you can be sentenced to prison, but come out free”, deplores for example Béatrice Brugère, secretary general Units magistrates FO, who denounces a “permanent decorrelation between the pronouncement and the ‘execution’ of the sentence. “These executions of sentences are ultimately slow and opaque: it is not readable for the citizen”, insists the magistrate, who decides, she, in favor of “short, even very short sentences” to be put in place “all of suite”, and “without waiting for the appearance of very serious facts to react”.
The French, too, are divided on the subject. According a study carried out by the prison administration in September 2019, the majority of them (80%) believe that there are offenses “not punished enough”, but at the same time, 87% of respondents want the development of measures to to carry out a sentence outside prison, such as community service or the electronic bracelet. The latter are widely acclaimed for offenses often considered too punished, such as theft, petty crime or traffic offences. Paradoxically, it is on the most severely judged crimes – acts of a sexual nature, terrorism, murders – that the French consider justice too light.
“Political issue”
For Corinne Rostaing, a sociologist specializing in the prison world, the question is above all an activist one. “On the right and far right side, we have seen a real security frenzy since the beginning of the 2000s, influenced by political figures or high-profile news items that have contributed to this growing feeling of insecurity among French”, she deciphers, referring for example to the Tony Meilhon affair. In 2011, this multi-recidivist murdered Laëtitia Perrais, a young 18-year-old waitress, in Loire-Atlantique. The man had only been out of prison for a year, and should have been supervised by a judicial follow-up which was never put in place, for lack of means. “When you let an individual like the presumed culprit out of prison without ensuring that he will be followed by an integration counselor, it’s a mistake,” said the President of the Republic at the time, Nicolas Sarkozy. As the controversy swells and the political debate flares up, the responsibility of justice in this affair is widely called into question – to the point that Michel Mercier, Minister of Justice in office, dismisses the interregional director of Rennes prison services, Claude Yvan Laurens.
“Each time a repeat offender commits a new offense, the case will be highlighted and recovered politically. And this can only contribute to the indignation of the French on the subject”, analyzes Corinne Rostaing. Caroline Abadie, MP (LREM) for Isère and rapporteur for the Commission of inquiry aimed at identifying the dysfunctions and shortcomings of French prison policy, rendered in January 2022, can only confirm. “The role of politics in this general impression of lax justice is enormous,” she said, even though her report was delivered in the middle of the presidential campaign. “There is a long tradition of detention in our country, a search for zero risk. It is therefore difficult for politicians to assume, especially when there are electoral issues, what citizens do not want to to hear: namely that a prison sentence is not always effective, and that the sentences must sometimes be considered differently”. For the member, the gap between these different visions of justice can hardly be bridged. “The question is to know what is expected of a prison sentence: do we want a judicial system that punishes the individual, or that ultimately allows his reintegration?”
“Fantasy”
At the same time, certain public positions, such as those of the police unions, can “largely maintain the fantasy of a permissive and partisan justice within public opinion”, believes Corinne Rostaing. Latest example? In May 2021, several thousand police officers demonstrate in front of the National Assembly, in Paris, after the murder of Brigadier Eric Masson – killed in Avignon during a control on the sidelines of drug trafficking. The police then demand greater firmness from the judicial institution, accused of a certain laxity vis-à-vis the attackers of police officers. “The problem of the police is justice”, even dared Fabien Vanhemelryck, general secretary of the Alliance union, in a shock formula quickly denounced by the Minister of Justice Eric Dupond-Moretti. More than a year after this gathering, Alliance does not regret its words. “We say aloud what everyone thinks quietly, justice must wake up”, retorts Frédéric Lagache, general delegate of the union. “For us, the EGJ’s recommendations to limit short prison sentences are a mistake: on the ground, the only message sent to offenders is that they will not go to prison”.
“This kind of communication does a lot of harm to justice: it is an idea which is then repeated by the population, and which we can no longer overcome”, criticizes Cécile Mamelin, denouncing “intense lobbying by certain unions police to political figures and public opinion”. Especially since according to Christian Mouhanna, researcher at the CNRS and specialist in criminal policy, this political recovery is added to a “strong ignorance” of the French for the prison and judicial universe. “First there is this idea of the four-star prison, which is totally out of step with the reality of the facts and the rate of overcrowding observed in recent years”, explains the sociologist. “Then there is this feeling that the fine and the prison are the only punitive sentences, forgetting everything that exists between the two. Ditto for the vision of delinquency: there would be the good guys and the bad guys, without any possible nuance. This way of thinking, very simplistic and reductive, has a real impact on the feelings of the French in the face of the sentences imposed by the courts”.
Despite this observation, Cécile Mamelin wants to be optimistic. According to the vice-president of the USM, certain trials, such as that of the attacks of November 13, 2015, would thus make it possible to sensitize citizens “to the complexity of justice”. “For nine months, we managed to go beyond clichés and caricatures, without limiting justice to an act, to a single response”. The magistrate notably opposes this procedure to the Outreau affair, “whose media treatment and political recovery had participated in a very caricatural representation of justice”. For her, “all trials should be treated with the same dignity” as that of the Paris attacks. “Magistrates are trained to maintain a certain neutrality, which is not the case with public opinion or even jurors. We must continue to fight against this temptation of emotion”.