The CSM sees in the Police departmentalization project risks of damage to the independence of justice.
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It is a speaking all the stronger as it is rare. The Superior Council of the Magistracy (CSM) published, Wednesday, October 26, a press release to share its “deep concern in the face of the reform project” of the judicial police. This is the first time that the institution charged by the Constitution to assist the head of state in his function as guarantor of the independence of the judicial authority is publicly expressed on a reform project. Which is more from another ministry than that of justice, in this case that of the interior.
The CSM sees in the creation of the departmental directorates of the national police wanted by Gérald Darmanin a real risk of hindrance to the independence of justice. Because behind the reorganization of the national police, the fate of the judicial police has become an issue. The meeting of all police services (public security, border police, intelligence and judicial police) under the leadership of a single departmental director, himself attached to the prefect, would have many consequences.
This reform is widely criticized by investigators from the judicial police, responsible for the most complex surveys on organized crime and economic and financial delinquency. While the sector already suffers from a lack of attractiveness due to the complexity of the criminal procedure, they fear that depending on the prefect’s public security imperatives, these specialized services are devitalized to increase the presence of “blues” in the street.
For the CSM, the guarantees of operation of the judicial police in a rule of law, “essential corollaries of the principle of independence of the judicial authority”, are threatened in the state by the project of Place Beauvau. The institution’s press release, chaired by the two highest magistrates of the Court of Cassation but mainly composed of non-magistrates, thus lists the guarantees that it seems essential to preserve: “Management and control of the Judicial Police by magistrates, directors
of constitutionally guarantor investigation of freedoms; the free choice of the investigation service by the magistrates of the prosecution and the investigating judges; the definition and implementation of criminal policies on the territories by the prosecutors and the public prosecutors; Respect for the secrecy of the investigation and the investigation. “
The Ministry of the Interior would have the hand more
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