Pierre-Marie Sève is General Delegate of the Institute for Justice (IPJ).
The justice budget will increase in 2020!
This is what the Prime Minister announced Thursday evening.
It's good news.
More money for Justice, that means more means to build, to make, to renovate a Justice in a pitiful state.
The French have lost confidence in their judicial system - as evidenced by the latest poll favoring the death penalty - and this confidence must be restored.
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We should be pleased that our government has finally heard the French appeals for help for years.
What we must say, however, is that this increase in the justice budget is first of all insufficient, and then that it is only smoke in the eyes if it is not accompanied by a deep reflection on penal philosophy.
We are far from it.
Decades behind
This increase in the justice budget in France is first of all good news because our country suffers from decades of delay in this area.
A 2016 European Commission report established that France spent only 72 euros per capita on justice, when Germany spends double (146 euros) and the United Kingdom even more (155 euros).
To put it simply, for French justice, it would take not 8 billion as it will be the case, but 14 billion euros of budget simply to catch up with our neighbors.
The French have lost confidence in their judicial system - as evidenced by the latest poll favoring the death penalty - and this confidence must be restored
This misery of French justice is illustrated for example, very easily, with the number of judges in our country.
There are only 10 judges per 100,000 inhabitants, which is half the European average.
A crying lack of prison places and resources
If in France, we had to resort to a law systematically adjusting all prison sentences of 2 years and less by alternative measures to prison, it is because our prison system has been chronically overflowing for years, so as not to not say decades.
The construction of prison places is urgent, essential and should be the number one priority of anyone who intends to improve the judicial and penal system.
It is therefore to be hoped that this increase in the Justice budget will result in the construction of additional prisons.
We would not need 8 billion euros as it will be the case, but 14 billion euros of budget simply to catch up with our neighbors.
For three reasons, we have reason to believe that this increase is not enough.
First, both in relation to our European neighbors and in relation to the extent of our vast needs, the increase in the budget is simply insufficient.
Second, money is not everything and Justice could have a budget of 100 billion euros that the crime would not be solved without asking a deep questioning of its philosophy.
Finally, if money is not everything, Justice does not do everything in dealing with the problem of delinquency.
An increase that is too small in its magnitude
Even increased, this budget remains too low.
First of all in relative terms, that is to say not only in relation to our European neighbors, but also in view of other State expenditure.
Think of the frightening revelations of Charles Prats who figures at 14 billion euros social security fraud of foreigners who do not even live in France.
Let us also think of the 2 billion euros spent by the State in 2019 for the care of unaccompanied minors.
Compared to these colossal sums, 8 billion euros to manage the entire Ministry of Justice, it is ultimately very reasonable.
But this increase is also too low in absolute terms: the construction of prison places is essential and requires very significant resources.
As such, let us recall that the candidate Macron had promised 15,000 additional prison places - the Institute for Justice is asking for 30,000 - President Macron then announced that only half would be built.
Today, we are finally expecting 3,000 new prisons over the entire five-year term, which would be a big joke as the urgency is glaring.
A change of philosophy in justice
As a 2017 Senate report reminds us, the increase in the budget has been constant every year since 2002 and that does not prevent crime and delinquency from increasing.
The heart of the problem of increasing delinquency is not a problem of means, but it is a problem of the end.
Think of the frightening revelations of Charles Prats who figures at 14 billion euros social security fraud of foreigners who do not even live in France
It is an ambient ideology, a culture of excuse, which innervates not only justice, but also education, the family, relations with the State and between citizens.
Within the judicial world, a major ideological and philosophical change must take place.
The Institute for Justice has denounced it for years: for 40 years, politicians and the judiciary have adopted an ideology that completely excuses and removes responsibility from delinquents, this must change.
This change in mentality must also find a translation in the law.
We must accept this change of philosophy and no longer be afraid.
Do not be afraid of an exit, at least provisionally, from the ECHR, which is necessary if only for the proven links between many judges and the eminently politicized
Open Society Foundation
of Georges Soros.
Do not be afraid to make a complete reform of juvenile justice, adapted to the increasing violence and the juvenility of offenders.
Don't be afraid to use the right words.
Do not qualify a crime as "incivility", stop the practice of "judicial correctional" which makes crimes appear as misdemeanors, both in words and in terms of penalties.
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Finally, as the Keeper of the Seals said Friday morning on RTL, reacting to the increase in the budget of his ministry, justice is not the only one in the loop.
The general collapse of education, the break-up of families, growing cultural shocks: all these elements are not the responsibility of justice.
Respect for authority (respectable authority means) goes through school, through families.
A new way of thinking, finally realistic, must circulate everywhere.
Do not be afraid of an exit [...] from the ECHR which is necessary if only for the proven links between many judges and the eminently politicized Open Society Foundation of Georges Soros
Thursday evening, the Prime Minister took up a principle enunciated by Cesare Beccaria, very often taken up by the Institute for Justice and whose support seems essential to us to move in the right direction:
"the certainty of a sentence, even moderate , will always make more impression than the fear of another, even more terrible, but which would often be unfulfilled. ”
While we must therefore remain extremely cautious about the future, there is room for hope.