We will keep from her the image of a frail woman, with an outdated hairstyle and a net of voices corrected by the firmness of the tone, impervious to criticism, impassive at the microphone of hemicycles, parliamentary committees or radios. Appointed Keeper of the Seals by accident, after the hasty departure of François Bayrou, Nicole Belloubet, professor of public law and cacique of the PS, followed without deviating from the roadmap entrusted to him by the President of the Republic, and applied without blinking the fixes that were imposed on it.
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One thing is certain, however, Nicole Belloubet can boast of a masterfully led success, without drum or trumpet, where Christiane Taubira failed despite all her lyrical surges and her legendary charisma: to empty the prisons without creating the least controversy. . The heart of the planning law for justice (LPJ), the great law that it carried with forced march, is a reform of major sentences. It prohibits the shortest, obliges to arrange those below one year and encourages the magistrates to propose accommodations from the hearing. In addition, there are arrangements for early release from detention and limitation of pre-trial detention. Enough to reduce prison density and dissolve Macron's broken promise to build 15,000 prison places in the sands.
It does not matter if no in-depth reform of the integration and probation services has been undertaken to ensure the effective follow-up of these convicts serving their sentences outside the walls. The containment and the fight against the Covid accelerated the movement. A movement almost invisible to public opinion, since at the same time the Chancellery prohibits free access to prison statistics. Another consequence of this sentencing revolution is that of weakening the world of prison guards, who were on the verge of being right with the Keeper of the Seals, in the winter of 2018 by setting off the longest conflict that this administration has had. known in twenty years.
A fragile institution
However, Nicole Belloubet, who has been said to be more " the Minister of Law than that of Justice ", is far from garnering such success with the judiciary. The courts remain punished, although the vacant posts of magistrates have all been filled. Admittedly, six months of almost stopping activity did not help, but they show all the fragility of the institution which is collapsing today under stocks. IT developments carried out in all directions showed their limits during confinement and forced the Chancellery to an emergency rebalancing in terms of network and equipment. And procedural reforms have not yet had time to take hold. In addition, Nicole Belloubet lacked political clout to go through with her reform of the judicial organization. If it imposed the criminal courts by surprise to relieve the assizes, it was less fortunate as for the reform of the judicial card. The amalgamation of the magistrates 'and magistrates' courts into courts of justice is to his credit, but it has failed to rationalize the courts of appeal. At the forefront of the opposition, lawyers, with whom the divorce has continued to grow, culminating in the pension reform. Nicole Belloubet did not have a way out of the crisis until the arrival of confinement, which worsened the situation of this profession.
But perhaps and above all, the Keeper of the Seals has failed to resolve the existential question of the independence of the judiciary and the confidence of the French in this institution. Nicole Belloubet leaves the Chancellery when she has just completed an inspection of the scandal of faded lawyers exploited by the National Financial Prosecutor's Office and while the President of the Republic has asked the Superior Council of the Magistrature to examine development of the Fillon affair during the presidential election. A paradox for the one who, over the course of her mandate did not hide her admiration for the work of a prosecutor, and a poisoned pill for the end of the five-year term.