France: New internal security law
01 November 2002
New laws governing the exercise of police powers and the criminalisation of a host of new offences place the blame, and appear to be aimed directly at the poor and the “foreign”
Nicolas Sarkozy, interior minister in the Jean-Pierre Raffarin government, presented a draft bill on internal security (projet de loi de sécurité interieure, PLSI) in the Assemblée Nationale (French parliament) on 23 October 2002. The text was an expression of the goals sought by its predecessor, the loi d´orientation et de programmation pour la sécurité intérieure (LOPSI), approved on 29 August 2002, that establishes a five-year plan and follows the priorities to be addressed in that period, particularly making the national police force and paramilitary gendarmerie more effective in criminal investigations and improving security. Provisions include an increase in police numbers, better cooperation between forces, simplified procedures and lower thresholds for the recording of personal information in law enforcement databases and stop-and-search. These measures will be supplemented by the introduction of tough sanctions against petty crimes such as begging (which may even be construed as organised crime!), prostitution, squatting or obstructing public highways. A number of organisations - including trade unions, opposition parties, civil liberty groups, lawyers and magistrates have described the law as "instituting a Republic in which poverty is considered a crime and in which the expression of a conflict becomes a crime".
LOPSI: more police, more powers
The reorganisation of French internal security under LOPSI has a planned budget of 5.6 billion euros between 2003 and 2007, and includes the creation of 13,500 new jobs to be divided between the gendarmerie (7,000) and the national police force (6,500) over this period. Provisions are also made for gendarmes who reach their age limit to extend their service by a year, though the plans do not only concern police numbers. They also attempt to create a system whereby policing will permeate civil society, through:
- the establishment of civilian reserve officers to be used in the case of "serious crises";
- an increased number of six-man patrolling squads for "problem areas";
- the strict management of municipal, national and paramilitary police forces by central and local political authorities who would have regular meetings with police chiefs;
- increased cooperation between forces through regular high level meetings;
- the shared use of databases - the scope of which are extended to "petty and medium-scale delinquency" in the PLSI;
- and a reduction in legal restraints on the use of investigatory powers.
LOPSI's overall aim is to "fix the new institutional architecture of internal security", and to "give internal security services a renewed judicial framework to allow them to combat certain kinds of criminal conduct and delinquency more effectively". A network of international liaison officers will be developed, with officers and funds made available for activities outside France that involve internal security, such as combating terrorism, organised crime and money laundering, international crime syndicates and ’illegal immigration’ networks. This appears to tie in with the EU Framework Decision on joint investigation teams (OJ 2002 L 162/1) and proposed Decision on the joint use of liaison officers in third countries (OJ 2002 C 176/8).
PLSI: security as “the first of all liberties”
The PLSI's explanatory memorandum claims that new framework is needed to address the four million crimes recorded in France in 2001. With no mention of social factors such as exclusion, it assumes that crime can be reduced by improving the effectiveness of internal security forces; "modernising" the French legal system; and "strengthening the authority and ability of public agents" to restore security. While paying lip service to the need to "strike a balance between the respect for individual li