A working group, set up in July 2019, made up of fifteen people, including magistrates, a lawyer or even police and gendarmes, submitted a report to the Ministry of Justice a few days ago in order to improve the judicial treatment of unresolved cases, also call “cold casesThis report lists 26 recommendations in about 50 pages. For the moment, these are only recommendations and nothing says if they will all be implemented.
A “cold cases” criminal investigation office
Noting a “lack of coordination” between local and regional judicial actors, he stresses that the “compartmentalization and forgetting are the essential evils from which the judicial institution suffers in the face of the most serious of crimesThe report recommends first of all to rcensoring old files still under investigation as well as the closed unresolved cases, and set up a cold case criminal investigation office in each appellate court.
A website and specialized magistrates
Among the 26 points for improvement, the report also recommendsdevelop an open-access website listing unsolved cases, by including a section devoted to disappearances of children, and to sensitize the public on old cases through the media to collect new evidence.
As regards the conduct of investigations, the working group recommends entrust the investigation of these crimes to magistrates specializing in these cases which would come under specialized interregional jurisdictions (JIRS). Created in 2004, these courts bring together prosecutors and investigators and currently deal with highly complex organized crime and financial delinquency cases. Certain cases which could lead to investigations abroad could for their part be centralized at the national level.
Extend the prescription and systematic genetic analyzes
While some of these cases are serial killers, the task force advocates “create a new survey framework“allowing”investigate the life course of a criminalThe report also calls for set the limitation period at thirty years for all crimes of blood, against twenty currently, to systematize genetic research in parenthood or to prohibit the destruction of seals in unresolved cases.
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