• The desired reform plans to place all police services, including the judicial police, under the authority of a departmental director reporting to the prefect.

    There would therefore no longer be any central offices investigating throughout France.

  • A Senate report published on Thursday considers that this reform risks confining the services of PJ in a too restricted geographical framework, and especially to put the most complex investigations in the background.

  • The Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, wants the reform, hotly contested internally, to be effective for the 2024 Olympics.

The project was already the subject of strong internal protest.

He is now heavily criticized in high places.

The reform plan of the judicial police, initiated by the Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, is crushed in a senatorial report published on Thursday.

“Structural pitfall”, “anachronistic”, “unsuitable”… The words used by its rapporteur, Senator LR Philippe Dominati, are final.

If the latter does not deny the need for an in-depth reform, he considers that the current project poses “difficulties” and must be “modified”.

This warning shot is all the harsher for the tenant of Place Beauvau as it comes from where we did not expect it.

From the Senate first.

The minister - former LR past Renaissance - systematically favors this chamber, where the right is in the majority, for the examination of his texts at first reading.

This was particularly the case for its planning and orientation law on security, and it will be, in March, for that on immigration.

As for Philippe Dominati, a fine connoisseur of questions about the police, he is generally on the same wavelength as the minister.



Elucidation rates of up to 95%

Yes, but here it is.

In the eyes of the senator, the government's plan is not heading in the right direction.

This plans to place all the police services of a department – ​​from public security to intelligence, via the judicial police – under the authority of a departmental director, himself attached to the prefect.

Clearly: this would sign the end of the central directions, in particular that of the PJ.

These have been tasked, for more than a century, with dismantling criminal or terrorist organisations, elucidating the most complex crimes or investigating serious financial crime, the influence of which is not limited to one location. quite precise.

And the figures speak for themselves: the clearance rate ranges from 74% for counterfeit cases to 95% for drug trafficking. 

“These rates are significantly higher than average rates in other services,” the report insists.

And that's what upsets the authorities.

Because the PJ only deals with the top of the "spectrum", the most serious or complex cases.

The rest, that is to say, most of the delinquency, is managed by public security.

However, these services are weighed down by a huge stock of cases, and the clearance rate has been falling in recent years.

Hence the government's desire to extend the competences of the PJ services.

Undress Paul to dress Jacques

A bad calculation, believes Philippe Dominati.

If he considers “necessary to respond to the congestion of the services” of public security, he believes that it is not necessary to “undress” the central management of the judicial police.

During a press conference on Thursday morning, the senator felt that this reform risked "locking these services into a much too restricted framework", and therefore limiting their scope.

“What are we going to do when a

go fast

crosses all of France?

Will we bring together all the department directors?

“, recently mocked a PJ manager.

What about those criminals who are suspected of having a winding course and on whom investigations must be carried out in a large part of the territory?

Another fear: “That priority be given to less important cases” in order to reduce stocks, explained Philippe Dominati.

And thereby bring up the statistics.

In 2021, a report by the Court of Auditors had indeed caused a stir in the highest spheres: it underlined that the rate of elucidation had dropped by 21% between 2010 and 2020. Above all, it is extremely low with regard to the everyday crime.

Only 10% of burglaries and 15% of robberies are solved.

Still, for the author of the report, “we do not give a specialized service the same missions as a public road service.

»

“Positive and undisputed effects”

Will the government follow the opinion of the Senate?

Nothing is less sure.

On Wednesday - even as Philippe Dominati presented the conclusions of his report to the Finance Committee - the Minister of the Interior and that of Justice published a press release praising the "positive and undisputed effects" of this reform, currently being tested in the Overseas.

The audit carried out on the spot shows that it "has generated greater visibility of the action of the police, the multiplication of coordinated inter-service operations, a better sharing of resources and manpower", they believe.

While the experiment is also continuing in eight metropolitan departments, the Ministers of the Interior and Justice are planning for the reform to be effective for the 2024 Olympic Games. , what to start.

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  • Police

  • Federal police

  • Reform

  • Gerald Darmanin

  • Senate

  • Justice