Asked about Valérie Pécresse’s proposal to territorialize the sentences, the President of the Senate assured that “differentiated sentences” already exist and mentioned the 18th arrondissement of Paris where there would be “twice as many prosecutions from prosecutors”. It is true, but it has nothing to do with the proposal of the candidate LR for the presidential one.
Posted
Update
Reading time : 2 min.
“There are already differentiated sentences (…) in the 18th arrondissement of Paris for example, for identical offenses there are twice as many prosecutions by public prosecutors. So the prosecution can already act, and on instructions from the government, may be particularly attentive to this or that part of the country “, argued the President of the Senate, Gérard Larcher, interviewed Monday, December 6 on franceinfo. He thus reacted to the proposal of the LR presidential candidate, Valérie Pécresse, to “territorialize” the sentences. Clearly, to punish more severely the offenses committed in already difficult districts.
Twice as many chases in the 18th?
The figure mentioned by Gérard Larcher does not come out of nowhere, we find it in the thesis of a researcher on The geography of criminal justice, written in 2017.
The Paris prosecutor explains that the“we can have, especially on the 18th, a referral rate twice as high as in other districts with equal infringements”. But that has nothing to do with what Valérie Pécresse offers.
These are prosecutions and not sentences handed down. Prosecutors have the right locally to be more severe with regard to certain forms of delinquency as indicated in article 39-1 of the Code of Criminal Procedure: “Taking into account the context specific to his jurisdiction, the public prosecutor implements the criminal policy defined by the general instructions of the Minister of Justice”.
They can, for example, ensure that all dealers are sent to court, but this does not bode well for the penalties that will ultimately be handed down by the judge. The penalties are never automatic, it is a fundamental principle of French law.
More severe penalties in certain places?
The law, it is true, is more severe for certain crimes committed in certain places. This is what Gérard Larcher understands by “differentiated sentence”. But again, it has nothing to do with what Valérie Pécresse is offering. The sale of drugs, for example, is more severely punished when it is committed in a school: the penalty incurred is reduced from five to ten years. But this is valid as well if you sell drugs in a school in Seine-Saint-Denis as in the Creuse: the law is the same everywhere in France.
However, Valérie Pécresse, she wants a different application according to the territories, which would be contrary to the Constitution and to the principle of equality before the law.