Overview

• Gérald Darmanin has sent details of the ten-article ‘SURE’ law to parliamentary groups and aims to present it at an autumn cabinet meeting following a September Conseil d’État review
• The reform reserves simple suspended sentences for first-time offenders with clean records and prohibits them for prison terms exceeding two years
• Mandatory sentence adjustments for terms under one year would be abolished while judges could choose to adjust up to two years of imprisonment and restore sentences of less than one month
• Plea-bargaining would extend to certain crimes with victim consent and departmental criminal courts would gain authority over appeals and cases of recidivism to ease assize-court backlogs
• Magistrates’ unions and legal professionals warn the plan undermines individualized justice and lack of funding provoked tensions during Darmanin’s visit to the Nanterre tribunal