In his book, “50 ideas received on justice”, intended to be educational, he abuses commonplaces about the judicial world.
How is your new book different from “Chronicle of a Prosecutor or How I Became the Trial” published in 2021?
Almost two years ago, I was talking about all the ideas I received about the mission of a prosecutor. I took it for granted that the citizen didn’t really know what a prosecutor could or couldn’t do, from all the clichés about this function. Today the spectrum is wider. These 50 ideas received, I explain them, confirm them, invalidate them or blur them with my vision as a practitioner and magistrate. It is a question of going beyond these clichés, of putting an end to the phenomenon of Justice Bashing, of putting an end to this vision of a too lax justice that does not take care of the victims and is not severe enough with the offenders.
Your book talks a lot about this so-called laxity. Take the example of prison data in France, the strictest in Europe.
Today public opinion thinks that justice has become an accomplice to crime. The latest prison data published a week ago reminds us that, with 72,000 prisoners in France, we are the country with the largest number of prisoners in Europe. Prisons have never been so full while eight out of ten French people believe justice is too lax in a survey. Our incarceration rate is 98 per 1000 whereas it is, for example, 53 in the Netherlands. We are also criticized for thinking only of sentencing prison sentences. This is false, I recently confiscated more than a million euros of property from a defendant.
Can we speak of an educational message intended for the general public?
I am a magistrate and, in my entourage, nobody works in this environment. At home nobody knows how justice works, I am often challenged and laughed at during family meals. So I explain. But why do we have such a weak judicial culture? Because justice doesn’t communicate enough, there’s still this screed of lead about our obligations of confidentiality and discretion. Because we don’t communicate enough, journalists and lawyers do it for us. With my book, which is intended to be educational, I nevertheless remain respectful of my ethical obligations.
Was this book inspired by your experience in the Lot?
For nothing. For the simple and good reason that I wrote it while in confinement, in 2020. At the time I was assistant prosecutor in Nîmes. I corrected it when I was Deputy Attorney General in Nîmes. A magistrate has the right to write a book as part of a university course, when one goes off the beaten track like me, I don’t have the right to use processed files unless they are finally judged. But in my book I wrote a post about domestic violence, it’s my roadmap in the Lot.
What makes you want to write?
I fell into the writing virus a while back, co-workers gave me a head start when I thought you should know people in publishing and have a ton of clearances.
