Justice in our country has just taken an enormous step backwards. What's the issue? Nothing more nor less than keeping convicts who have completed their sentence in prison for an additional unlimited length of time, detaining them in consequence, not for what they have done, but for what they are presumed to be!

This is a veritable revolution in French law. Up until now, the principle of our criminal justice system for over two centuries has been no prison without a crime. From now on, we've reverted to what Robert Badinter has called "the return of the dangerous man."

In the name of this dangerousness, after completing his sentence, he deserves only to be placed in a penal center - as a virtual criminal - after magistrates' closed-door judgment and decision. In the face of this legal trespass, one may easily imagine what results such a law could provoke in a system more concerned with order than with freedom.

Didn't the very conservative Georges Fenech, who introduced this law, comparing it to neighboring systems, refer to a similar law introduced in Weimar Germany? A law that in fact dates to November 27, 1933, and was signed by then- Chancellor ... Adolf Hitler.

Yet, this proposal has been accepted by the Conseil Constitutionnel, the highest decision-making body charged with overseeing respect for the law, constitutional principles, and citizens' rights. It's a slow collapse of our Republic.

Is it an accident that at the time when the presidential function has fallen into serious disrepute, the Conseil Constitutionnel is presided over by Jean-Louis Debré, author of bad thrillers during his free time and just consigned to a new job at the Conceal?

There is at least one basic principle that the promoters of this law had tried to violate - the laws' non-retroactivity - and that the Conceal censured - as was the least it could do.

The detention for safety purposes will only be able to be pronounced within a fifteen-year period and only on "condition that the convicted person (...) be taken into care during the period of his sentence and treated for the personality disorders from which he suffers."

Hence, the numerous questions posed also on that issue by one of our Republic's sages, Robert Badinter: "Where are the means? Do we have an adequate number of psychiatrists? What are the modalities of treatment? How will they go about analyzing dangerousness?" Questions that were never asked during this debate.