Pierre-Marie Sève is General Delegate of
the Institute for Justice
(IPJ), an association of citizens mobilized alongside the victims.
FIGAROVOX. - The president-candidate announced a bill of programming and orientation of the Ministry of the Interior, supposed to be presented to the Council of Ministers "in March". It provides for an increase of 15 billion euros in the budget allocated to Beauvau during the next five-year term, ie an increase of 25% by 2027. What do you think?
Pierre-Marie SÈVE. -
This increase in the interior budget seems to me to be a real mistake.
Lack of resources is no longer a real problem for the police.
Since the 2015 attacks, the executive power has chosen to significantly increase its resources and staff.
To keep their promises of police reinforcements, the authorities have also significantly lowered the criteria for competitions and even the duration of police training.
It is not an increase in the budget that will compensate for the lack of vocations.
Second, this budget increase completely misses its mark.
The objective of this increase is supposed to be the fight against insecurity.
As I said earlier, the number of police officers has increased dramatically over the past seven years.
However, this had no impact on delinquency and criminality.
In reality, the problem is justice. This is already what Fabien Vanhemelryck, the secretary general of the Alliance police union, said at the big police demonstration in May 2021: "the problem of the police is justice". To reduce delinquency, we must make our justice stronger. The current state of delinquency has, in fact, for main cause the feeling of impunity of the thugs: they know very well that the judges do not condemn! They know very well that convicts do not always go to prison and that those who go there never stay there for the prescribed time! This judicial system has, for the moment, neither the will nor the means to be firm. Some 40,000 additional prison places would be needed. Justice is the root of the problem ofinsecurity for 30 years and Emmanuel Macron has clearly not identified it.
Read alsoThe rise in violence is fueling tensions between judges and police
Finally, I am wary of these budget announcements 5 years in advance.
This principle, which is that of military planning laws, is often wishful thinking.
In the past, these military planning laws have been changed many times from year to year.
What if another candidate was elected in April?
There would be a good chance that this programming law would be amended along the way and that would be legitimate.
On January 9, several individuals had fun dragging at least two people, including one over the age of 60, behind their car, grabbing them by the coat. Are the acts of delinquency more and more cruel? How to respond to this violence?
First, I want to say that it is reassuring that this abject video shocks most Internet users on social networks. Cruelty has of course always existed, but the generalization of cruelty is indeed an observation made by many seasoned players in the field, in particular the police, but also by the average citizen. These feelings are not to be thrown in the trash under the pretext that they are subjective!
Moreover, this impression is confirmed by numerous statistics: yes, the violence of minors has been more and more serious over the past twenty years.
For example, the number of attempted homicides by young people increased by 144% between 1996 and 2020, the number of assault and battery by minors more than doubled, and the number of sexual assaults by minors has been increased. multiplied by 4 in 20 years.
There is a problem !
Today, the thugs have an expression, "put a penalty" to designate this practice of taking a person's head like a soccer ball and kicking it hard ...
Pierre-Marie Sève
Today, a delinquent does not hesitate to give a free stab when he commits a theft.
Today, 15-year-olds can hammer another youngster in the head, like the teenager Yuri beaten up in Beaugrenelle a year ago.
Today, the thugs have an expression, "to put a penalty" to designate this practice which consists in taking the head of a person like a soccer ball and kicking in it, as it happened to Alexandre. , plainclothes policeman beaten up in Lyon a year ago, and 8 of the 10 co-accused were acquitted last week.
Read alsoSpectacular increase in violence in France
Responding to this violence requires firmness in punishment.
Without firm justice, the collective subconscious internalizes that certain antisocial behaviors are permitted, no matter what is written in the Penal Code.
I affirm it today, the French collective unconscious goes to ruin, the difference between what is authorized and what is prohibited is more and more blurred because there is no more authority for call her back.
If nothing is done to regain justice, this violence will only get worse.
Emmanuel Macron announced that he wanted a "doubling of the police force in action on the ground for security by 2030". Should this measure be coupled with a strengthening of the means of justice?
It is clear to almost any observer of justice in France, that the means must be increased.
This chorus has been going on since at least the 1980s, and it still holds true.
French justice is poor on a daily basis: dilapidated courts, material resources from another age (fax or software such as Word 1995), but above all the monumental workload experienced by magistrates, and in particular prosecutors.
The proof is that France is lagging behind in all European justice budget comparisons.
The number of places is so low that our prisons are overcrowded even though France imprisons fewer prisoners per capita than the European average.
Pierre-Marie Sève
But Justice is also poor at another level, in terms of its working tools: prison places. France has been in prison overload since the 1970s and is still not getting out of it. The number of places is so low that our prisons are overcrowded even though France imprisons fewer prisoners per capita than the European average. When we then know that France has a more criminogenic population than most European countries, we understand that nothing is working.
The citizens' problem is not the lack of police officers, it is that delinquents are no longer punished.
I even find it disturbing that the State persists in wanting to deal with the problem of insecurity by strengthening the police when it is obvious to all observers that the problem of insecurity has its source in justice.
This blind will is either incompetence or pure ideology.
