The debate was reopened after the knife attack near the Eiffel Tower. The right wants to extend security detention, which currently only concerns a limited number of serious crimes, to convictions for terrorism. “We are going to put a bill back on the table in the Senate which provides for security measures compatible with our rule of law,” announced the president of the LR group in the Senate, Bruno Retailleau, on LCI on Wednesday.
“This will target very dangerous individuals, who will have been sentenced to prison terms of at least ten years, with measures which will allow them to be monitored at the end of their sentence, to have strict control of all their movements, including an order for treatment,” he clarified. This measure “would make it possible, for example, to put on electronic bracelets, to ban a certain number of places, to ask to go to the gendarmerie once, twice a day,” insisted the boss of the LR senators.
The Constitutional Council has already partially rejected this measure
As an exceptional measure, secure detention currently only concerns a limited number of serious crimes including rape, murder, assassination, torture, barbaric acts, kidnapping and kidnapping. Pronounced for a period of one year, its renewal is unlimited. A 2020 LREM bill provided for the establishment of “security measures against perpetrators of terrorist offenses at the end of their sentence”, including the wearing of an electronic bracelet.
Adopted by Parliament, the text, however, came up against the Constitutional Council, which judged it to be partly non-compliant because it constituted, “as it was written, an attack that was neither appropriate nor proportionate to the rights and freedoms constitutionally guarantees”. “We must take into account what the Constitutional Council said, but I think that what has happened since 2020 can encourage an evolution of jurisprudence on these subjects,” added the President of the Senate, Gérard Larcher, on RTL.
A “judicial preventive measure”
Another law adopted in July 2021, however, established “a judicial measure for the prevention of terrorist repeat offenses and reintegration”. This text imposes “health, social, educational, psychological or psychiatric care”.
This measure is pronounced at the end of the sentence by the Paris sentence enforcement court at the request of the National Anti-Terrorism Prosecutor’s Office. Its duration of one year maximum is renewable for up to five years.