Traveling to Picardy on Wednesday, the new Minister of Justice Gérald Darmanin declared that he intended to obtain more resources for his ministry, in order to allow “rapid justice”, and also said he wanted to “clean the prisons” of their many difficulties .
Justice “is unfortunately too slow, the magistrates are the first to complain about it”, he declared to the press at the Amiens judicial court, his first trip as new Minister of Justice, on the day of Christmas. “What we want is more speed, more firmness. We cannot do it with constant means,” added Mr. Darmanin.
“This speed requires more staff, more clerks of course, and more magistrates,” he continued. “We will be reasonable” because we will “obviously” have to take into account national budgetary constraints, “but we must increase this budget of the Ministry of Justice”.
He said he had made an appointment next Monday with Amélie de Montchalin, the new minister responsible for public accounts, to discuss this “extremely important issue”.
While certain judicial unions have expressed their concerns about the desire for firmness displayed by the new Minister of Justice, who also said on Tuesday that he wanted to work “hand in hand” with the Interior, Mr. Darmanin tried on Wednesday to reassure. “I have political convictions, of course (…) but I am a man of dialogue,” he said, stressing that he called on Tuesday “all” of the union leaders in the world of justice, to take stock with them and meet them from Thursday. “All subjects must be put on the table,” according to the minister.
His predecessor Didier Migaud was in favor of integrating the notion of consent into the criminal definition of rape. This project will continue its course, Mr. Darmanin assured Wednesday: “I believe that the text of the law will arrive next spring, and I will have the opportunity to talk about it with parliamentarians and with the Prime Minister.”
Prison overcrowding
Mr. Darmanin also visited the Liancourt prison center (Oise) early in the evening, as prison overcrowding in France becomes more and more problematic.
More than 80,000 people were incarcerated in the country as of November 1, a new record, representing a prison density of 128.5%. And this while the objective of building 15,000 additional prison places should not be achieved “before 2029, in the best case scenario” warned Mr. Migaud last month.
But “we don’t always need prisons for people who are 20 years old (…), we must be able to do things much more on a human scale, almost everywhere on the national territory”, imagined Wednesday Mr. Darmanin, recalling being “very sensitive to the idea that small sentences, short sentences, must be carried out”.
It will therefore be necessary “perhaps that the specifications (of certain prison buildings, Editor’s note) be reviewed (…), debureaucratize all that,” he added to Liancourt.
The new Minister of Justice also said he wanted to stop making prisons “a place for the reproduction of crime”, where prison officers are “attacked” and subjected to “extremely strong” pressure, and where prisoners “continue their trafficking”. “We are going to cleanse the prisons of all the difficulties that prison officers experience. It will be difficult (…) and it will undoubtedly take time, but I will do everything I can,” he promised again.
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