It was therefore necessary to wait until the last minute, Monday, September 27, for the Minister of Justice to table his amendment in the Senate specifying what he intends to replace the reminder of the law in the code of criminal procedure. The rapporteurs in the Senate of the bill “for confidence in the judicial institution”, the examination of which begins on Tuesday, have also underlined in their report “A certain improvisation” of the government. He had suddenly deleted this first level of the penal response for, note the senators Agnès Canayer (Seine-Maritime, Les Républicains) and Philippe Bonnecarrère (Tarn, centrist Union), “Give pledges to public opinion” the day after the demonstration, on May 19, police officers in front of the National Assembly.
Main innovation of“Probative penal warning”, which should come into force on 1er January 2023, it can only be pronounced by the prosecutor or his delegates. The first demand of the police and gendarmerie was to no longer have to take care of it. However, two-thirds of the 272,000 reminders of the law recorded in 2019 were pronounced by a judicial police officer after a police custody or a hearing. This fueled criticism on the lack of consideration of petty crime by the courts.
A hardening of the penal response
On the other hand, a reminder of the law pronounced by a delegate of the prosecutor, who very often is a retired police or gendarmerie, in a house of justice or in court can have a meaning with regard to a first-time offender. , as Eric Dupond-Moretti himself pleaded, in November 2020, to the National Assembly during the discussion of the bill “improving the efficiency of local justice and the criminal response”. It was therefore necessary to replace it with something. It represents 21% of the criminal response and 45% of the alternatives to prosecution.
“We must start the scale of sanctions with a first step”, explains to World the Keeper of the Seals, who discussed at length with the conference of public prosecutors ahead of this amendment. This probative penal warning thus takes up certain characteristics of the reminder of the law, such as the condition of recognition of the facts by the person or the implementation of compensation in the event of damage caused to a third party. On the other hand, the perpetrators of violence or the perpetrators of crimes against persons holding public authority cannot be subject to such a measure.
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