Béatrice Brugère is the General Secretary of the Unit-Magistrates union.
Camus said that courage is organized.
I would add that the same goes for justice!
Two virtues that do not fall from the sky.
It is a necessity but also a moral duty for politicians and a requirement for magistrates to think about a new organization, a new reading grid.
As if the laws were sufficient in themselves to do justice.
Justice belongs more to the domain of action than of words.
Justice is above all a hierarchical administration with a chief at its head who is the Keeper of the Seals, organizing a distribution of tasks according to very precise methods grouped together in the code of judicial organization, the codes of criminal and civil procedure, but also in a set of laws, imposing deadlines, procedural choices,
under the responsibility of criminal policies.
They are therefore men and women magistrates and clerks in charge of setting these processes to music, and scrupulously ensuring that they are respected.
A kind of work chain that has become “hyper-productivist” like in Charlie Chaplin's Modern Times, where harmony seems to have unfortunately disappeared without making it possible to identify precisely the real cause of these disorders.
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Justice must also be organized with institutional partners, such as the police and gendarmerie, and in complex cases by calling on multiple experts, translators and court auxiliaries.
But above all, it takes on meaning and body only in the time when it is exercised, neither too quickly nor too slowly, a singular time which makes it possible to investigate, to debate, to protect, to judge, to punish and in the best of cases to reintegrate or prevent recurrence.
This time must be that of a Swiss clock, exact, precise and on time, otherwise justice misses its appointment.
Conversely, its delays will cause a cascade of malfunctions, like a butterfly effect disrupting the entire watch mechanism.
The Estates General of Justice, in a July 2022 report, brought to light the picture of excessively late justice, sometimes through its fault, sometimes through poor political or organizational choices, regularly resulting in condemnations of the ECHR for unreasonable delays!
If it is never too late to raise the bar, let us never forget the sentence of General Mac Artur,
"Lost battles can be summed up in two words: too late"
!
Can we decently say to the citizens and to the victims: sorry we are just late but we had no choice, the means are insufficient, the laws too complex, the contradictory injunctions and the stocks impossible to absorb!
This situation must never be trivialized, in a fatalistic discourse, to become the normal course of justice.
We must rebel against this balance sheet of near-bankruptcy of justice, which by dint of being late could disappear quietly, if from time to time we did not have a case making the headlines coming to awaken our consciences and sharpen our will to change.
Resignation is not on the agenda.
The latest laws for the application of sentences no longer allow for being more severe with repeat offenders than with first-time offenders.
Beatrice Brugere
The dramatic case relating to the young Sihem illustrates, once again, how the "normal" functioning of justice has become totally dysfunctional.
Thus, this drama highlights the recurring problem of the excessive length of investigation delays, judgment delays, execution delays which are almost never those of the sentences pronounced.
How to understand that a multi-recidivist suspect, heavily sentenced at the Assizes, is released before the execution of his sentence to be tried again for a criminal case in 2023, for facts that date back to 2011?
And yet, on closer inspection, it is an almost usual situation.
Regarding the alleged murderer of the young Sihem, Mahfoud H., he allegedly committed a first criminal act (a robbery with a weapon) in December 2011, which was to be tried on February 1, 2023 before the Gard Assize Court .
The hearing of this first case was not considered a priority, as is always the case for cases, even criminal ones, for which the defendant is not, or no longer, detained within the framework of this affair.
On average, the time taken to judge an investigation file is four years (counting the time for the investigation and the time for the hearing).
It should be noted that the 2023 finance bill for the justice budget provided for this period to increase further, in view of stocks and the congestion of the courts.
In addition, the defendant in the Sihem case committed other criminal acts in 2012 (theft with a weapon and in an organized gang), for which he was tried this time more quickly in 2015 (because he was detained in the context of this case).
He was sentenced to a twelve-year prison sentence, and was released in 2020 with a sentence adjustment in application of the laws.
He therefore actually spent about eight years in remand, instead of the twelve pronounced by the trial court, and this while he had also been sentenced 13 times for various offenses!
Indeed, the latest laws on the application of sentences no longer allow, with some exceptions, to be more severe with multiple repeat offenders who benefit from the same methods of
The increase in the numbers announced recently will only be a blow in the water, if it is not accompanied by strong and proactive measures on the organization of justice.
Beatrice Brugere
Added to this is the fact that a person charged and remanded in custody can simultaneously serve a prison sentence.
The time spent in pre-trial detention (which will be deducted from the prison time to which he will be sentenced) is then merged with the execution of the sentence carried out in the context of a separate case, there will be no accumulation of sentences. .
Thus Mahfoud H, as part of the first criminal case dating from 2011, had been placed in pre-trial detention for 24 months, between 2015 and November 2017, while simultaneously executing the previous sentence.
He will therefore not have spent more time in prison for having committed two crimes than if he had committed “only one”.
This accumulation of circumstances, which does not come under dysfunctions as such, despite appearances, explains why, despite his heavy criminal record, Mahfoud H. was free when he allegedly killed the young Sihem.
This new tragedy perfectly illustrates the need to overhaul our criminal procedure in depth, so that misdemeanors and crimes can be tried effectively and within a reasonable time, and that sentences can regain real meaning, given the challenges of protecting our society.
The increase in the numbers and resources of the judiciary announced recently will only be a sword in the water and will dissolve in the procedure, if it is not accompanied by strong and proactive measures on the organization of Justice.
To be more precise, it would be necessary to establish deadlines, a real simplification of the procedure which better protects the victims, a general review of the execution of sentences, and a change of software which today imposes a system of Systematic "extrication" based on very generous sentence reductions.
There is an urgent need to bring justice back to the issues that affect citizens, and not in the service of ideology or bad political choices.
Justice must be clear in its ambitions and its means to achieve this.
The current penal reform project does not go in this direction.
