The electronic bracelet, how is it assigned, what are the rules to follow? Stéphane Babonneau is a criminal lawyer in Paris with Babonneau Mariotti.
franceinfo: There are several cases in which a person can benefit from an electronic bracelet. The first is at the time of judgment?
Stephane Babonneau: The electronic bracelet is a sentence adjustment, that is to say a way for a convicted person to serve a prison sentence. There are three ways to obtain an electronic bracelet, or rather to have one imposed.
It is at the time of the judgment, the magistrates who condemn the person, at the same time, condemns him to carry out his prison sentence in the form of an electronic bracelet. This is possible for convictions less than or equal to one year. If the person is sentenced to a higher sentence, the bracelet can be granted after incarceration, but it will be the sentencing judge, once the person is in prison and has a lower sentence remaining or equal to two years.
The third scenario is when the court pronounces a prison sentence, but having no document allowing it to grant a bracelet, leaves the possibility to the sentence enforcement judge to propose a bracelet by the following.
There are conditions to benefit from it. Which ones?
It is a measure of favour. This allows a person who has either a professional project, a stable situation or a project to reintegrate, not to go to detention, and therefore not to lose the benefit of their efforts.
The law provides for a certain number of criteria, including either following a training course, having a job, or being in a family situation which requires one to be present, when one is, for example, a single parent of a minor child or a dependent person.
But above all you have to show the judge that you are making amends and that you are not going to reoffend, since the bracelet is really a way of ensuring that a person is not desocialized, while serving a sadness. We don’t do what we want when we’re on an electronic bracelet.
What obligations are imposed?
The main obligation is to respect the exit times. We are under house arrest at certain times of the day which are determined with the sentence enforcement judge.
If you have a job, the bracelet must allow the person to go to their job, to come back. Outside these hours, you must stay at home. And that’s down to the minute. Every time the scheduled time is exceeded by even a minute, an alarm sounds, which can call in the police to check if the person is not on the run.
We are not immediately reincarcerated because we exceed by one minute, but in the long run, if there are several incidents, we can be summoned by the sentence enforcement judge and have our electronic bracelet revoked, that is, to be incarcerated.