“Drastic” reduction in sentence adjustments, increase in the number of prison places, doubling of the number of magistrates… The program of the National Rally (RN) of Jordan Bardella and Marine Le Pen plans to shake up French justice. L’Express scrutinized some of the far-right party’s proposals, based on Marine Le Pen’s presidential program in 2022. Concerning the 2024 legislative elections, the RN proposes to “put an end to judicial laxity in towards delinquents and criminals.
“Double” the number of magistrates and “open” the profession
One of the flagship measures presented by Marine Le Pen in her program for the 2022 presidential election lies in “doubling” the number of existing magistrates “in five years”, in particular by “considerably opening the avenues of access ” to the training of the latter. “Lawyers or police officers, retired legal professions or even representatives of civil society, will be able to benefit from an extended external tour, while guaranteeing the quality of recruitment,” it is specified.
The Ministry of Justice is brushing aside the possibility of such a measure. “Concretely, it would be necessary to recruit 10,000 magistrates in five years, and as many clerks and justice attachés. This is materially impossible”, lists the Chancellery, which has quantified the cost of such measures: “Doubling the number of magistrates would cost 1, 2 billion euros per year Training 9,500 additional magistrates would cost at least around 1.3 billion euros and given the state of the ENM’s training capacities (which we have already doubled), this would take at least 20 years. “.
Regarding the opening of the judiciary to other professions, 36% of the school’s auditors were already in the process of professional retraining in 2024 – but still took and passed the judicial examination. “The opening of the profession therefore already exists. If the RN wishes to massively recruit colleagues who have neither the technical training guarantees nor the ethics to practice this profession, that seems to me to be a false good idea”, warns Ludovic Priat, president of the Union Syndicale des magistrats (USM).
Contacted to clarify the modalities of an “extended external tour”, the National Rally did not respond to requests from L’Express. This notion evokes an “internal” recruitment route which would allow access to the judiciary via a “bridge”, for example without competition. Certain professions, such as university professors, already benefit from this type of recruitment, called judicial secondment. “You are then seconded for five years to the judiciary, at the end of which you can carry out what is called integration, to permanently join the body,” explains Olivier Cahn, professor of criminal law at the University of Cergy. “It would therefore be enough for the RN to expand this procedure, obviously taking the risk of lowering the requirements concerning the profiles of the people recruited,” he adds.
More jail time
To implement a more repressive penal policy, Marine Le Pen also wants to opt for a “drastic” limitation of sentence adjustments and alternatives to prison, such as electronic bracelets or community service (TIG). The candidate pleads, “from the first serious offense”, for short, even very short prison sentences, “one or two weeks, one, two or three months”, which would make it possible to “stop the delinquent path”, on the model of the policy implemented in the Netherlands. At the same time, the member for Pas-de-Calais proposes the reestablishment of the famous minimum sentences, resulting in a “minimum” of sentences for certain offenses.
In France, where the rate of prison overpopulation reached on May 1, 2024 125.3% nationally, and amounted to 150.3% in remand centers – which accommodate prisoners sentenced to short sentences – these measures simply seem “unfeasible”, at least in the short term, according to the specialists interviewed by L ‘Express. On May 1, 2024, the Ministry of Justice counted more than 16,700 people detained at home using electronic bracelets. In 2022, more than 13,000 people have been sentenced to community service. In this context, Ludovic Friat warns: “If we drastically limit sentence adjustments or alternatives to prosecution, while increasing the number of short or very short sentences, the number of incarcerated prisoners will literally explode, in structures that are already absolutely outdated. “.
For the magistrate, these measures are thus “totally unrealistic on a material level”, and could even be “counterproductive”. “Prison sentences could not be carried out due to lack of space, or detainees would find themselves in establishments out of control,” he underlines.
Increase in the number of prison places
To accommodate these new potential prisoners, Marine Le Pen is proposing to increase, within “six years”, the number of prison places to 85,000 – compared to 62,000 currently. Here again, the experts interviewed are perplexed. By 2027, the number of effective places available in French prisons should be increased to 75,000, according to the “15,000 plan” launched by the Macron government in 2018. But the implementation of this plan, estimated by the Court of Auditors at 5.4 billion euros in a recent report from October 2023is already facing significant delays in completion, attributable in particular to difficulties in searching for land.
According to a report on the subject carried out by Senator (LR) Patrick Hetzel in May 2023, “the land acquisition procedures were hampered by technical and environmental feasibility constraints”, to which is added “the opposition of certain local elected officials or residents to the projects of construction, which results in particular in the multiplication of contentious appeals”, likely to extend the time necessary for the acquisition and design of prisons. Generally speaking, this document indicated that a prison real estate program could not be completed in “less than 10 years”.
“In such a context, how can we imagine the creation of 10,000 places, in addition to the 15,000 plan, in six years? There are real practical difficulties which make this measure unfeasible,” said magistrate Denis Salas, president of the association. for the history of justice. Prison officers abound. “There is already a shortage of 3,000 prison guards, which leads to the continuity of traffic in prisons, the massive presence of telephones or the projection of packages… This measure would amount to adding saturation to an already over-saturated system,” considers Wilfried Fonck , national secretary of the UFAP-Unsa Justice union.
Imprisonment of minors
On juvenile justice, Marine Le Pen also wants more repression. In particular, it proposes the creation of “at least one closed educational center [CEF] by department”. Currently, 54 centers, designed to accommodate adolescents who are repeat offenders or have committed particularly serious acts, are spread across the territory, and 22 are under construction. The measure could prove extremely costly, according to a report from the Court of Auditors published in July 2023, which estimates that each new CEF represents an investment of 6 million euros. Not to mention a significant operating cost: 705 euros per day per minor in the public sector in 2019.
The CEFs are also faced with recruitment difficulties. In the public sector, only 271 permanent agents occupied one of the 514 available positions, leaving the majority of vacant places to contract workers, often poorly trained. To the point that the Court of Auditors notes, in its report, that “the weakness of the studies relating to their effectiveness, the problems encountered in their operation and the difficulty in optimizing the use of available places justify that a pause be observed in the programming of new CEFs”.
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