The Constitutional Council validated on Thursday July 23 the law of Renaissance MP Charles Rodwell including the extension of the period of administrative detention of foreigners considered dangerous, as well as a system of injunction of psychiatric examination, on which the Sages however expressed some reservations.
This text of law was the subject of two appeals before the Constitutional Council, one by socialist deputies, the other by LFI and environmentalist deputies.
Illegal foreigners may be detained in an administrative detention center (CRA) with a view to their expulsion if there is a risk that they will escape. The maximum length of detention is currently 90 days, or 180 days for those convicted of terrorism.
Deputy Rodwell’s text extends the maximum duration to 210 days for the latter, as well as for foreigners definitively convicted of certain crimes and offenses punishable by at least five years in prison.
A measure extending the period of detention for certain foreigners considered dangerous was censored last summer by the Constitutional Council, which deemed it not “proportionate” to the objective of combating irregular immigration. But Deputy Rodwell had tabled this new text taking into account the remarks of the Sages.
Several reservations expressed
This time, they considered that the attack on individual freedoms was “proportionate”. He stressed that the extension of detention could only be pronounced “exceptionally” and must be justified by a “real, current and particularly serious threat to public order”.
The text also provides, with a view to preventing terrorist acts and for people who have engaged in “actions likely to be (…) linked to mental disorders”, the creation of a “psychiatric examination order” by the prefect, who may after this examination order forced hospitalization.
In the event of refusal to submit to the examination, a judge may authorize the police to go to the person’s home to present them to a psychiatrist. The Constitutional Council has expressed several reservations here. He notably stressed that the magistrate should set “the maximum duration of the measure”, which should not exceed 12 hours. He also asked that the magistrate notify, for a minor or protected person, his parents or guardian.
The law finally provides for the creation of “terrorist security detention”, making it possible to place in a care center, after a prison sentence, people presenting a risk of recidivism and adhering to a terrorist “ideology”. The Constitutional Council specified that this provision could only apply to future convictions, and only if these relate to facts subsequent to the entry into force of the law. The Wise Men have finally validated the tightening of the conditions for changing one’s name in the civil registry.
