The government’s plan to reform the judicial police arouses reservations in the police stations as well as in the courts. Ahe meeting is scheduled for Thursday 1 September between the minister of the Interior Gerald Darmanin and representatives of the PJ. VShe government reform project, already tested in eight departments and scheduled for 2023, intends to place under the authority of a new single manager, the Departmental Director of the National Police, answerable to the prefect, the intelligence services, public security, border police and judicial police.
Currently, each service is accountable to its hierarchy. Judicial police investigators are thus under the authority of the central director of the judicial police. In its project, the government plans to integrate them into an investigation sector, alongside public security investigators, in charge of everyday crime. The objective is to unclog the investigation services of the police stations and to simplify the operation of the national police by “organ pipes”.
This reform project comes up against the opposition of many PJ investigators, who fear the dilution of their know-how, or even the abandonment of certain territories. The opponents of this project denounce the risk of a “leveling down”. As a sign of opposition, the National Association of Judicial Police was launched August 17. “Apolitical” and “without union label” in an institution where the latter are very powerful, it brings together investigators determined to alert on the “disastrous consequences” reform “for the security of citizens and the independence of justice”.
Creation of the National Association of the Judicial Police, against the burial of the PJ, to defend the idea of a highly specialized and independent police force, at the service of the citizens:
Read, subscribe, and share: pic.twitter.com/3dtCJ1TNk3— INTERIOR FSU (@mi_fsu) August 25, 2022
The criticism is shared by the judicial world. In July, the Union of Magistrates sent a letter to the Ministers of the Interior and of Justice. The investigating judges of the French Association of Investigating Magistrates also alerted to the “hazard” of this reorganization.
François Molins, the attorney general at the Court of Cassation, said on France Inter on Wednesday that the reform is “carrying a certain number of dangers” and don’t go “in the right direction”. Lth first “risk” is, according to the former Paris prosecutor, “destroy” YP services, “the only services that have succeeded in maintaining quality in surveys”. The second “risk” is linked to the departmental scale, a level that he deems “too small” with regard to a crime that “is played out at the inter-regional and international scale”. François Molins, one of the highest magistrates in France, also fears “the risks of political interference”with in particular a strengthening of “the authority of the prefects over the police”.
For @francois_molinsthe reform of the judicial police is not going “in the right direction” and carries “a certain number of dangers”, starting with that of “destroying something that works”#le7930inter pic.twitter.com/QODT3E2hra
– France Inter (@franceinter) August 31, 2022
The boss of the police, Frédéric Veaux, tried on Tuesday to defuse the sling by sending a letter to the staff of the judicial police. In this letter, consulted by franceinfo, the director general of the national police claims that he “it is not a question of questioning what works well but of being able to rely on the expertise of the central management of the PJ”.