Facial controls in France: the defender of rights offers solutions

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After the mobilization of Tuesday June 2 to ask for the truth for Adama Traoré and the end of the police violence, the defender of the rights Jacques Toubon made several proposals to restore confidence between the police and the population.

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The idea of ​​better supervising identity checks to limit face checks and ultimately recreate trust between part of the population and the police is not new. In 2012, already, President François Hollande had promised that he would put in place a receipt system to avoid the same individual being checked several times in the same day. The promise was never realized, but it would not be ideal either, according to the defender of the rights. 

In an interview with the agency France Presse, Jacques Toubon advocates rather a "traceability of controls" to combat arrests with facies which, according to him, are a sociological reality in France. A study published by his institution in 2017 revealed that an individual perceived as black or Arab is 20 times more likely to be arrested than another.

This tracing of controls could for example be done by making public the statistics on the individuals controlled. Jacques Toubon wants it as proof that during the confinement related to the Covid-19 pandemic, the Ministry of the Interior published the statistics of checks on exit certificates, with the percentage of those who were the subject of dispute. According to him, it would be quite possible to extend these statistics to all types of checks, by simply modifying the Code of Criminal Procedure to clarify that a check cannot be discriminatory. 

Jacques Toubon also recalls that the number of complaints to the defender of rights concerning the police has increased considerably in recent years, even if he recognizes that in 90% of the cases there was no breach of the police or gendarmerie.  

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