Minimum sentences, suspended only for primary declines … Gérald Darmanin presents his bill reforming justice

The Minister of Justice wishes a drastic simplification of the penal system, including “faster” and “more effective” sentences. He hopes for an adoption of the text at the beginning of next year.

The Minister of Justice presented Monday, July 28, before the press, the main lines of his bill reforming the judicial system. Gérald Darmanin took the opportunity to specify the calendar of this text which he wishes to see adopted “At the beginning of 2026”. The bill sure to ensure a useful, rapid and efficient sanction still requires approximately two months of consultations, according to Gérald Darmanin. The Minister plans to present the text in the Council of Ministers between October and November and hopes for its adoption by February. The bill will be examined in the Senate and then in the Assembly, specifies the minister.

Gérald Darmanin wishes a drastic simplification of the penal system including sorrows “Faster” AND “more efficient”. According to the Keeper of the Seals, there have never been so many pronounced sorrows, however “One in two is not done”. In particular: “Sentence developments”. In his text, the Keeper of the Seals recalls that in 2024, “While 93,000 prison sentences were pronounced, 41% were fitted out or converted before any incarceration (…) a prison sentence in two is therefore never executed in prison”.

In this bill, consulted by Franceinfo, the Minister therefore wishes “Delete the exemption and the adjournment of sentence”, “reserve the simple stay only for people in the virgin criminal record” While initially the Keeper of the Seals wanted to completely delete the stay. The Minister also wishes “Return to the principle of compulsory development”, “delete the possibilities of sentence conversion”,, “Make the development of sentences for foreign persons impossible to prohibit the territory”,, “Establish minimum sentences” or “Restore the possibility of pronouncing sentences less than a month”.

For Gérald Darmanin, French justice is affected by “Two major crises” : a “serious crisis of confidence in the effectiveness of sentences and their period of execution “ and a “Very dangerous progressive inability to judge the most serious crimes within reasonable deadlines”. The Minister of Justice describes the system of criminal sanctions as “Too complex, even illegible”. He regrets that sometimes justice uses “Mechanisms leading to converting, often to lighten them, the sentences pronounced by the courts”.

With this bill, Gérald Darmanin therefore wishes “drastically simplify law while strengthening the certainty and speed of the sanction” but also “Restore the freedom of individualization of convictions to judges”With the end of the obligation to develop sentence.