French Justice Minister Rachida Dati unveiled plans on Friday for minimum sentences for repeat offenders, but the measures appeared less tough than the campaign rhetoric of President Nicolas Sarkozy.
Before his May 6 election victory, Sarkozy vowed to introduce minimum sentences for serial delinquents and ensure juveniles with a track record of offending were treated as adults when it came to sentencing.
His proposals sparked howls of protests from magistrates, lawyers, human rights groups and leftists, who warned mandatory minimum sentences would violate constitutional guarantees giving judges leeway to fit the sentence to the individual. Critics said Sarkozy, a hard-line former interior minister, should focus more on prevention rather than repression and said his plans would further pack France's overcrowded prisons. Dati, a trained judge giving her first major interview since her appointment, said judges could ignore the new sentencing guidelines if they explained why.
"In no way will the minimum sentences in my bill be automatic, ones that judges would be forced to impose," Dati told the daily Le Monde. "This bill will not call into question the judges' freedom to evaluate the case, which goes to the heart of their profession. It intends to set down clearer guidelines for clamping down on repeat offending," she said. Legal experts said any attempt to adopt US-style mandatory minimum sentences could lead the Constitutional Council to strike down the law.
Dati's measures are due for debate at a special summer session of parliament to be called after June 10 and 17 legislative elections, which Sarkozy's ruling Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) is widely expected to win handsomely.
"I think inmates who leave prison and commit the same offences again ... must understand that there are limits that should not be exceeded," said Dati, a woman of North African origin whose appointment to a senior post was hailed as sending a positive message on diversity.
Dati said the minimum sentence would be roughly one third of the maximum term provided under the criminal code, would also apply to youth repeat offenders and would cover offences punishable by three years in jail or more. But she suggested a delinquent would be considered a repeat offender on the second offence, something Sarkozy appeared to rule out in a March interview.
The new president made a crackdown on youth crime and repeat offending a key campaign issue, vowing that youths who constantly broke the law would be punished like adults because their age did not lessen the trauma suffered by their victims.
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