Béatrice Brugère, general secretary of the Unité Magistrats SNM-FO union, criticizes the working methods of the Minister of Justice, Éric Dupond-Moretti, since his arrival and is very critical of the new reform project.
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How do you judge the record of the Minister of Justice since his arrival?
BÉATRICE BRUGÈRE.
Justice has turned into a battlefield.
Riding on ideas of false accusations of corporatism and bias in political affairs and corruption proceedings, the minister has destabilized the judiciary as a whole.
Systematically resorting to caricature, for the first time a minister hardly attacked his agents.
In this context of mistrust, proceedings were initiated against him before the court of justice of the Republic.
The record is meager apart from a few measures on the generalization of criminal courts launched before his arrival.
As a reminder, the former lawyer was upset against their creation, today the minister sees only advantages.
As for the management of the Covid health crisis, it is not up to the risks incurred by staff and litigants.
Is there still this bill to restore confidence?
Confidence cannot be decreed but it is organized.
A new project is still under study while the ink is barely dry of a series of reforms voted as part of the justice projects by the former Minister of Justice, Nicole Belloubet.
How to give confidence to a system whose rules of the game are constantly changing?
It seems that justice suffers in its governance from a serious problem of method.
Political communication takes precedence over analysis and serious work to identify the real causes that paralyze justice in its action, both civil and criminal.
This is appalling.
Poorly made, ill-conceived and without means reforms are worsening the situation day by day to the detriment of justice personnel and citizens.
The latest project is a perfect example.
It is not a question of giving as the title project to "restore confidence in justice" to lay the foundation stone: no inventory, no statement of reasons, no impact study, everything with a wet finger.
This text is completely irrelevant given the urgent needs and essential issues.
Only the general interest should be our compass because justice is not a luxury but a necessity.
If there is mistrust in the justice system, it is first of all that of our minister who has constantly criticized it as a lawyer and to question the judges as a minister.
The French do seem to have lost confidence in justice ...
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The mistrust that citizens could have comes from the unfulfilled hope of equity and justice which cannot be confused with the infantilizing and demagogic project of reality television carried by this project.
We don't need any gadgets.
I believe that the French prefer to have concrete results that we watch on TV
(Editor's note: the project provides for the broadcast of the hearing)
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The citizens do not want the spectacle, they want decisions, an accessible, serene impartial justice delivered within reasonable timeframes and carried out.
According to Béatrice Brugère, "the record of Minister Eric Dupond-Moretti is meager".
Arnaud Journois
Which measures do you think are irrelevant?
Who is reassured to know that in future assize courts will sit an honorary lawyer?
Who is impatiently waiting to watch a technical hearing of the Court of Cassation on TV when we lack computers and basic means to run the courts?
Who is affected by the supervision of wiretapping of a lawyer when he commits an offense?
And make no mistake about it, local justice brandished as a new communication mantra after deleting sites is not there either.
Contract workers are being recruited in disaster to help make decisions while the country is regularly inflamed under the blows of organized crime, cybercrime, gang delinquency of minors tried in too long a time and feeling with impunity.
Violence is spreading everywhere, including in the countryside.
It spares neither the firefighters, nor the police, nor the gendarmes, nor the prison guards, nor the mayors.
While the clerks, the magistrates, the penitentiary and the police lack everything, this project proposes as a solution to limit in time the preliminary investigations at the risk of endangering them.
We look away from the real problems: the lack of resources to deal with investigations more quickly.
This project is not interested in civil justice which accounts for 2 million decisions per year, which primarily concerns the French.
Yet the minister spoke of a historic budget for justice?
As for the budget, it is historical only in the mouth of the minister.
This is a catch-up of 200 million that had not been paid the previous year compared to the 2018/2022 programming law.
The justice budget follows the increase in the general state budget of 3.5% per year no more and no less while we are homeless.
This is not serious !
In any case, it is not with this stack of measuring scoops that look like a normative flea market that the French will regain confidence!
It would have been necessary to use the method of analysis on the real problems, criminological expertise, on the reality on the ground, social dialogue and collective intelligence to understand the blocking points ... In a word from the humility and transversality.
This is the approach initiated by the Ministry of the Interior with the Beauvau de la Sécurité, respecting and listening to its agents.
The dialogue at the Ministry of Justice boils down to the minister's monologue.
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What should have been done?
In the collective imagination, justice is not independent enough and in reality we can greatly improve the system.
However, this is not really on the agenda.
A major constitutional reform would have made it possible to breathe new life into the organization of this independence with regard to political power.
This reform should be accompanied by a major reflection on career management based on criteria exclusively linked to the competence and excellence of magistrates.
What do you think of the controversy around the national financial prosecutor's office and the referral to disciplinary proceedings of certain magistrates?
Instead of having a punitive approach to the disciplinary spectrum, it would have been better to have had a real vision of the selection, training and support of justice actors.
It is urgent to rethink the organization of work based on a qualitative and non-qualitative culture of results.
The controversies maintained on the national financial prosecutor's office are of less interest to the French than the execution of civil and criminal decisions.
Even if the situation is quite unprecedented in the treatment of PNF since it is the first time in the history of justice that the Minister is suspended on the decision of the Prime Minister to exercise his disciplinary power to avoid conflicts of interest
( Editor's note: Jean Castex personally took up a conflict at the PNF, concerning Eric Dupond-Moretti when he was a lawyer)
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We will see what will emerge in the end of this case.
This project seems to want to be more severe on the reductions of sentences ...
The figure regularly put forward in the press by the Minister of a 92% execution rate should be put into perspective.
It only corresponds to the execution of prison sentences within four years!
The real figure for immediate execution of prison sentences is 32% (2018 ministry figures).
As for the recovery of fines, which is the most pronounced penalty, its recovery rate is less than 40%.
All the last laws passed and the circulars of penal policy ask us to avoid incarceration or to release as soon as possible.
This situation regularly feeds criticism of the laxity of justice.
Moreover, the announcement made on automatic sentence reductions in the project will not change much except disrupt the current system and increase the possible quantum of sentence reductions.
The philosophy will remain the same, it is the behavior of the detainee which will be the main criterion for granting or withdrawing.
In your opinion, is there a shortage of prison places?
In reality, and contrary to President Macron's promise, we have not built prison places (15,000 planned) to properly accommodate the detainees.
Worse still, magistrates could be forced by law and on the injunction of penal policy circulars to release or not to incarcerate delinquents if the prisons are full or if the conditions of decent accommodation are not met.
As for prison work, which is a flagship measure that we have supported for years, it is not accompanied by any major action plan to our knowledge or by a dedicated budget.
