The Minister of Justice, Eric Dupond-Moretti, and the Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin (from behind), in Paris at the end of the Council of Ministers of April 28, 2021 (illustration). – Sheep / POOL / SIPA
Eric Dupond-Moretti tries to defuse the crisis of confidence between the police and the justice system. On Wednesday, in fact, during the gathering of thousands of police officers in front of the National Assembly, the secretary general of the Alliance police union had ruled that “the problem of the police is justice!” “. But for the Keeper of the Seals, “this statement is false and it is serious”.
In an interview with Sunday newspaper, he therefore does everything to defend justice. According to him, the link between the two institutions must not be broken because “the police without justice is totalitarianism; justice without the police is powerlessness ”. He still considers legitimate the presence of his colleague from the Interior Gérald Darmanin at the police gathering last Wednesday.
The question of floor sentences
The Minister of Justice also recalls part of the quantified assessment of the criminal response that he had already taken on Tuesday before the deputies: “in 2019, 132,000 firm prison sentences were pronounced, against 120,000 in 2015”. “In the Nordahl Lelandais case, the Advocate General had requested 30 years of imprisonment; a popular jury sentenced him to 20 years. Is it laxity? », Launches the former lawyer.
Eric Dupond-Moretti also invokes the figures to justify his refusal to restore the “minimum sentences” demanded by the police unions for those who attack members of the police. Created at the start of Nicolas Sarkozy’s mandate in 2007, they provided for an irreducible minimum sentence for a certain number of felonies and misdemeanors and were abolished under the presidency of François Hollande in 2014. “If we look at the sentences that were pronounced during this period (between 2007 and 2014), we see that they were significantly lower than those pronounced after the deletion ”, he judges.
In this interview at JDD, the Minister also takes the opportunity to, once again, defend the “historic” budget of Justice. This “jumped 21% in four years and 8% just this year when we reach 9,090 magistrates”.