French judges, magistrates and justice services employees took strike action and mounted street demonstrations earlier this month in protest at a singeing attack by President Nicolas Sarkozy on the judiciary's alleged responsibility in a high-profile murder case in Brittany.
Sarkozy denounced previous "dysfunctions" that had allowed the main suspect in the case, who had a lengthy criminal record, to have been free to commit the crime. The criticisms, joined by a call from other senior government members for sanctions against those concerned, provoked unprecedented reaction by magistrates and the wider law profession.
The magistrates, who in France are professional figures, have become involved in a tense and escalating conflict with Sarkozy and his government. This resides largely in their long-unaddressed complaint over woefully inadequate resources and staff numbers, together with a series of stand-offs in high profile justice-led investigations into suspected corruption by politicians from the ruling conservative right majority, notably including the L'Oréal-Bettencourt affair and the 2002 Karachi bombing.
The exasperation of magistrates'unions was echoed by their counterparts among the police, who similarly complain of a lack of resources. While the strike by justice officials was called off last week, after a government climb down over threatened disciplinary action against them in the Brittany case, magistrates have now begun a ‘work-to-rule' movement, refusing to carry out their responsibilities whenever proper working conditions are not met.
Here, Michel Deléan and LouiseFessard interview judges, justice employees, police officers and lawyers to find out just what their grievances were, day to day. Their accounts reveal an alarming and deepening crisis. (The last names of some those interviewed have been withheld).
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Anne-Marie, principal deputy to the family affairs judge at the court of Créteil, in the Val-de-Marne département south-east of Paris (juge aux affaires familiales, a judge designated for all family-related procedures by the local court):
"Since the beginning of February we have received 3,600 cases of guardianship for minors which were previously spread around the six magistrates' courts [tribunaux d'instance] in the Val-de-Marne. Now they come under our jurisdiction. The problem is, we don't have any extra resources for all that. On the contrary, we lack five jobs out of 20 at the moment. You can imagine how we are able to handle these cases."
Marie-Thérèse, former probation and rehabilitation officer in Paris (conseiller de probation et d'insertion):
"For immediate trials at the 23rd criminal court, magistrates and clerks sometimes have to sitinto the middle of the night. One Saturday, at three in the morning, a clerk had to sleep in her office because there were no more taxis to take her home."
Danielle, clerk at the Marseille District Court (Tribunal de Grande Instance, or TGI, the main courthouse of a given jurisdiction that judges civil cases and which is also a base for prosecution services and examining magistrates in charge of investigations):
"We don't have enoughmoney because DNA tests and reports from medical and technical experts are very expensive. We are even being asked to limit our use of paper, but a 15-page judgment will always take 15 pages, so what are we supposed to do? We don't even havethe money to repair the toilets which are 30 years old! There is no more filing space so colleagues put files in the corridors. And we haven't got enough staff because one public servant in two is not being replaced. There are 250 clerks and administrative personnel at the Marseille Court, when there should be 270 given the size of the city. When a city's population grows, that has an impact on delinquency, divorce and access cases. So the penal system is favoured and in courts like industrial tribunals, people have been waiting for rulings for years. It's all about imprisonment, law enforcement."
Emmanuelle, clerk in a Paris magistrates' court:
"Our fax machine broke at the end of October. It is the usual way of communicating for people facing a trial and forlawyers who want to contact us, to ask for a report for example. The fax maintenance contract is no longer paid for because we have used up our budget. We stayed one month without a fax machine, and another court finally lent us its machine. On the other hand, colleagues on sick leave or maternity leave are no longer replaced."
'There is unprecedented exasperation'
Antoine, deputy administrator at the Marseille (TGI) courthouse's evidence depository:
"I joined the judicial system in 2008, before that I was in another public service department. I was surprised by the paucity of resources. Even the basics are lacking. For example, money to pay for uniforms, safety boots and gloves. Last week I bought myself gloves because I was fed up with grazing my hands. We lack resources for storing evidence, there are exhibits everywhere, it's like Ali Baba's Cave. And we have built up a huge backlog in handling destruction [of exhibits]. The procedure is not computerised; you have to go back up the whole chain just to destroy a piece of sealed evidence, an ordinary piece of paper. Has there been a judgment? Has there been an appeal? Does the magistrate agree? When I see that, it makes me wonder, if things don't work at our lower level, what it must be like at the top."
Jean-Louis, steward at the Paris Police Court (tribunal de police, a court headed by a magistrate which deals with petty offences, mostly road traffic-related):
"Our computers are so old that we were still using Windows 98 not long ago. Those machines are seven or eight years old and they are obsolete. Normally they should be changed every five years. But here, we only just got flat screens. Several have already given out."
Frédérique, chief clerk of the court at the Paris Employment Tribunal (les prud'hommes, an arbitration body to settle employer-employee and other workplace disputes, notably dismissal terms):
"We don't manage any more to adhere to timescales that are acceptable to people facing a trial. We reschedule cases for in a year's time for lack of a sufficient number of judges and clerks. It is not acceptable. We have a single fax machine for the whole labour relations board! We can't manage anymore."
Claude, probation and rehabilitation officer in Marseille:
"We are the final link in the penal chain. In Marseille we have about 90 to 100 cases per officer. We are on the ground, in a direct relationship with people who have been sentenced whom we see at least once a month. The negligence and the lack of personnel as far as clerks are concerned are such that sometimes we receive dossiers where the judgment is missing. Because it hasn't been typed up on time. So we are working blind. We don't know why the person has been sentenced and has a reduced sentence. That is difficult when part of our task is to work on the purpose of the sentence. Nowadays people sentenced to less than two years can have a reduced sentence. On the one hand the policy is to be strict; on the other hand people are let out of prison because of a lack of places, a lack of resources. It's less expensive to put an electronic security bracelet on someone than to put them in prison. And there is no such thing as zero risk. You cannot know at what point someone will commit an offense, even a psychologist cannot tell you that. Even if Tony Meilhon1 had had an appointment with his probation officer, that would perhaps not have prevented him from committing an offense two hours later."
Marina, probation and rehabilitation officer in Paris:
"I have to follow 85 people sentenced to alternative penalties to imprisonment. People with an electronic bracelet, in semi-liberty, conditional liberty or on probation. Usually, to do our work properly, we would need to follow 50 to 60 people. When I started ten years ago, we could have long discussions and see people at least once a month. Now we are obliged to see them less often, every two or three months. We work to very tight deadlines, with more and more people to follow and fewer and fewer resources. Yet we have a role in social and educational support, and preventing reoffending can only be done with the person's assent. It requires time. And new laws, like the Prison Reform Bill2, give us even more work. We have reached a degree of exasperation never previously attained."
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1: Tony Meilhon, 31, is the main suspect in a high-profile case involving the kidnap and murder of 18 year-old waitress Laetitia Perrais in Brittany in January. He was not given an appointment with a probation officer after leaving prison in 2010. French president Nicolas Sarkozy criticised this, targeting the role of magistrates, provoking the February strike of magistrates and other justice services staff.
2: The 2009 Prison Reform Bill (Loi Pénitentiaire) was designed to better adapt sentencing to individual cases and prevent reoffending.
'Police pressurised to make arrests, produce figures'
Angèle, an unassigned magistrates' court judge in the Paris region:
"I had 3,800 cases involving placing people under supervision for me alone. I was told to spend ten minutes on each case, not one more. And efficiency premiums were dangled in front of us. But putting someone under supervision is difficult, it takes a long time. Writing a judgment can take ages. The policy of assessment by figures is not at all suitable for our profession. We are not peas in a pod."
Agnès, judge in a civil appeals court in Paris (chambre civile, a division of a higher court):
"I haven't got a desk; I work at home for writing judgments. We lack everything, clerks, administrative staff, computers. Nowadays, the judiciary only functions in terms of statistics. But workflow management is totally unsuitable for our profession. We do not control the timing or vagaries of procedure. What we try to do is qualitative. And the more cases we handle, the less we can spend time on them and handle them well. It has got worse over the last few years. We are overwhelmed by a rising tide of legislation. On top of that, managers take the names of people who take part in workplace meetings and the police take our photographs in demonstrations. It's too much."
Régis, a police inspector, head of the police station in Marseille's 1st arrondissement (district):
"I cannot accept the judicial system and through it, the police, being covered in opprobrium. Since I took up my job three years ago I have lost fifteen per cent of the staff in my police station. That means a lesser presence on the streets. But it isn't so much a problem of staffing as of doctrine. French society has become considerably more legalistic over the past twenty years. There is an enormous demand on the judicial system and the police. People come to the police to report things that could be solved if people talked to each other more and if they were less excitable. Courts are overwhelmed with cases that have no reason to be there, which explains the system's congestion."
Pierre, police inspector based in Paris:
"For us there has been a constant reduction in staff for several years. We try to use technical methods because we lack human resources. Procedural constraints are increasingly strong. We have the same problematic as magistrates do: more work, with less staff and less resources. We are a public service, we work to find out the truth, and for the victims, that cannot be quantified. But we are asked to provide a quantitative service. On the ground officers are brought to order because they must make arrests, produce figures. Colleagues in the south could not do telephone taps requested by an examining magistrate because the police commissioner did not want to. He needed quick arrests to improve his figures, so he hid the recording machine in a cupboard."
'The conflict with the judiciary is now unbearable'
Michel Konitz, criminal lawyer in Paris:
"I totally support the magistrates. For years, every time there is a tragedy, instead of allowing time for mourning and contemplation, Sarkozy uses it to instil a law enforcement policy although this has been proved to be totally inefficient. He intentionally demeans the judiciary, creating the illusion of a world where tragedies would not happen. That is not possible. He has discredited himself. He is supposed to guarantee the independence of the judiciary and is responsible for law enforcement policy since 2002 as Interior Minister and then President of the Republic."
Eric Halphen, vice-president of the 3rd Civil Appeals Court of Paris (chambre civile):
"For years we have been asking for a justice system worthy of the name: at once modern, accessible for people subject to trial and independent. This major reform that we vociferously call for never comes. Instead of that, every year we have little reforms of no significance, and for each supposed dysfunction, the justice system is blamed. It isn't only a problem of resources, even if they are limited, but also a question of respect and dignity. If our justice system is scorned by the political powers, one should not be surprised if it is not respected by people subject to trial."
Isabelle Prévost-Desprez, presiding magistrate at the Nanterre Criminal Court (tribunal correctionnel, a court that judges crimes that carry a maximum sentence of ten years imprisonment, such as theft, fraud and grievous bodily harm):
"Magistrates have had enough of being treated in an undignified way by the highest authorities of the state. The climate is more and more tense. In fact, relations between the executive and the judiciary have been deteriorating increasingly since 2002. It has become frankly unbearable. Today, everyone has had enough. It is symptomatic to see that even the higher echelons of the judiciary are joining the protest."
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