A sentence that is not served is not a sentence.

The wait

The wait outlasts the punishment.

In 2025, the average delay between a case reaching the prosecutor and its dismissal or a penal response was 9.0 months. When the prosecutor dismisses for want of opportunity to prosecute, that delay rises to 17.6 months. The first judgement on the merits, before the correctional court, comes on average 12.2 months after the case arrives: the same figure as in 2024.

A direct summons takes 29.9 months. A referral by the investigating judge takes 54.4. A judicial investigation closed in 2025 lasted 36.4 months on average, 27.8 months for half of those charged, and 40.3 months when the outcome is a discharge. Nearly one investigation in two ends that way. For minors, the delay until judgement is 8.2 months.

Between the facts and the first decision on how to proceed, 17.6 months pass. For 39.4% of those charged, that delay exceeds a year. The IFRAP foundation notes, for its part, that the stock of pending criminal cases rose from 2,368 at the end of 2019 to 6,000 on 31 December 2025, and that the average delay in executing a firm prison sentence, outside immediate execution, was 14 months in 2024.

Infostat Justice no. 204, in October 2025, says it plainly: 86% of the French consider that justice is too slow. Among those who have used the courts, 89% are sensitive to delays. A law applied two years later is no longer a law. It is a promise.

Prison

They are stacked, and the sentence is not served.

On 1 July 2026, France held 89,446 prisoners for 63,289 operational places. Overall density was 141.3%. In the remand prisons it reached 174.5%. 7,890 people sleep on a mattress on the floor. 27,679 prisoners are surplus to the places. Those on remand, not yet judged, number 24,021, or 26.9% of prisoners.

On 1 January 2026, 80,216 convicted persons under the prison count were recorded, up 7.2% in a year. Nearly 30% of them are serving a firm sentence of one year or less. Prison is therefore full of short sentences and pre-trial detention, while the serious sentence takes more than a year to begin.

A sentence pronounced and not served is not a sentence. It teaches the convict that the Republic does not keep its word. The Empire builds the places that are missing, and it starts the sentence when judgement is given.

Reoffending

The man who leaves begins again.

In 2025, prosecutors dealt with 1,917,263 persons charged. 63.3% could be prosecuted. A penal response was given to 87.8% of them. The rest, 148,315 persons, were dismissed for want of opportunity. Among the responses, 29.8% are alternative measures, not a judgement.

Reoffending is measured on those who leave prison. According to Infos rapides Justice no. 37, published in April 2026, 34.2% of those released in 2021 were convicted for an offence committed within the year after release. For those released in 2020, the two-year rate is 47.5%. For those of 2019, the three-year rate is 52.0%.

Another measure, another file. In 2024, among those convicted, legal recidivism covers 9.8% of felonies and 20.4% of misdemeanours. Adding reiteration, 35% of those convicted of a felony and 45% of those convicted of a misdemeanour had already been judged. Legal recidivism has risen, since 1989, from 0.7% to 9.8% for felonies, and from 2.0% to 20.4% for misdemeanours.

The Institute for Justice, in April 2026, estimates from the national criminal record that the sentence pronounced is on average only 19% of the sentence provided by law. That is not a figure of the Ministry. It is an institute's reading. It says the same thing as the delays: the written law and the applied law are no longer the same.

The bench

The judge does not pay for his error.

Article 64 of the Constitution makes the trial judge irremovable. Independence was a guarantee against the prince. The Republic has made it a guarantee against the people. No personal consequence attaches to the magistrate whose released man kills, rapes or begins again. The surgeon answers for the operation. The pilot answers for the aircraft. The judge moves on to the next case.

The political bias of the whole profession is not measured by the Ministry. The Empire does not invent a percentage. It records a public fact. In 2013, in the premises of the Syndicat de la magistrature, a wall was photographed and made public: the 'wall of fools', on which were pinned the names of elected men, journalists and fathers of victims. That is not a census of every judge. It is the displayed doctrine of a union that judges men before it judges facts.

A judge whom nothing sanctions ends by judging for his camp. The Empire does not ask for docile judges. It asks for responsible judges. The robe is not an immunity.

The rule

What the Empire restores.

According to Locke^*, the Empire protects life, liberty and property. The rest is not its trade. Justice is not a social policy. It says what was done, and it makes the sentence follow.

Artificial intelligence judges in the first line the simple cases: theft, light violence, offences under three years. The judgement is automatic if it is not contested. A gap of more than 30% between the judge and the machine triggers an audit. A serious reoffence after release brings the magistrate back to judgement. The maximum delays are three months for a misdemeanour and twelve months for a felony, under pain of 20% of salary less per month of delay.

Floor sentences, created by the Act of 10 August 2007 and repealed by the Act of 15 August 2014, are restored. True life is incompressible. Squatters are evicted within seventy-two hours, winter truce or not. Delinquent minors incur real criminal responsibility. Those guilty of sexual crimes against children incur extra-heavy sentences. Fines carry a floor plus a share of income, so that the rich man does not buy the poor man's law.

Prisons are built. A density of 141% is not a fate: it is a refusal to build. The sentence begins when it is pronounced.

The people

The death penalty is put to a plebiscite. It is not decreed.

The Act of 9 October 1981 abolished the death penalty. The last execution in France was that of Hamida Djandoubi, on 10 September 1977, at Les Baumettes. Since then the question has been taken from the people and given to an assembly.

The Empire does not restore the scaffold by edict. The death penalty is a question of society. It belongs to the plebiscite: yes, no, blank, or postpone. The Agora proposes, the lawyers put it in form, the people decide. The Emperor does not sit as a court.

The proof

One country took its streets back.

Nayib Bukele^*, at the Palacio Nacional, on 19 January 2026: El Salvador had passed 'from the most dangerous country in the world to the safest in the whole hemisphere'. Homicides fell from 103 per 100,000 inhabitants in 2015 to 1.3 in 2025, according to Statista. In volume, murders fell from 6,656 in 2015 to 82 in 2025, according to Associated Press. Minus 98% in ten years.

The method was the state of exception, since March 2022. The gangs were not a debate about society: they were the government in fact. The Empire does not copy a regime. It keeps the lesson France has forgotten: a country has no rights if it no longer has streets, and a sentence that is not served does not exist.