Gérald Darmanin guarantees the creation of an autonomous court docket and a jail | EUROtoday

The Minister of Justice, Gérald Darmanin, formalized on Saturday December 6 the creation of a full court docket in Saint-Martin and introduced the development of a remand heart inside two years, throughout a go to to the Caribbean island.

The Keeper of the Seals thus needs “strengthen local justice and better support local prisoners in their reintegration”he instructed the press. The autonomous court docket ought to see the sunshine of day by the summer season of 2026, and can be outfitted with further assets when it comes to magistrates, clerks and people accompanying detainees. The minister thus introduced the “appointment in September 2026 of an investigating judge” for the autonomous court docket and Saint-Martin and Saint-Barthélemy, the place he continued his abroad tour.

If the Saint-Martin native court docket has had a sentence enforcement choose since September 2025, this isn’t but the case for the investigating choose.

A jail on the island

Gérald Darmanin recalled that the autonomous court docket mission ought to “to be accompanied by a prison policy which is lacking here in Saint-Martin”. He talked about the truth that roughly “around sixty Saint-Martinois” have been presently detained in Guadeloupe, making household visits and the reintegration of those detainees tough.

The minister additionally insisted on the creation of a jail on the island to combat in opposition to jail overpopulation in Guadeloupe, but in addition as a “a good service to provide to the people of Saint-Martin, for their families”.

The future remand heart needs to be constructed on the mannequin of the modular prisons introduced in April by Mr. Darmanin in a number of cities in France, judged to be simply as strong, faster to construct and cheaper by the company of the Ministry of Justice.

It ought to accommodate Saint-Martin residents in pre-trial detention, or sentenced to brief jail sentences – lower than two years.