French Criminal Law and Justice: Procedure, Rights and Records

French criminal law is written across two codes that answer different questions. The Code pénal defines what counts as an offence, grades offences into contraventions, delits and crimes, sets the penalties, and lists the grounds that remove criminal responsibility. The Code de procédure pénale governs the machinery around all of that: how a report is received, how a suspect may be detained and questioned, how a case reaches a court, and how a conviction is recorded and eventually erased.

Between those two codes stands the procureur de la République. In France the decision to prosecute is a prosecutorial one, not something a victim controls by filing a form. That single fact explains why so many readers arrive confused: they have reported something, they have a reference number, and nothing appears to be happening. Reporting an incident, opening an investigation and bringing a prosecution are three distinct steps, and only the first one is fully in your hands.

Information last verified on 21 July 2026. This page presents general legal information, not legal advice.

Which code answers your question

If your question is about conduct, whether something was an offence and whether anything excuses it, you are in the Code pénal. If your question is about process, how long the police can hold someone, what has to be told to them, who receives a criminal record extract, you are in the Code de procédure pénale. Keeping the two apart is the fastest way to find the right rule.

This section of our France legal guide covers the procedural side in depth and the substantive side where it matters most to ordinary readers, which in practice means legitimate defence. The pages below are grouped the way people actually meet them: reporting something, being caught up in the system, paying for representation, and living with the record afterwards.

Reporting something: the log and the complaint

The first fork most people hit is between a main courante and a plainte, and it is the fork that causes the most damage when it is taken wrongly. A main courante is a declaration recorded in a police or gendarmerie register. It creates a dated trace that something was reported, and nothing more.

Critically, a main courante does not open a judicial investigation and does not trigger prosecution, though officers who consider the facts amount to an offence must still notify the procureur, who may then decide to prosecute. It also does not stop the prescription clock, so a reader who logs an incident and waits can find the right to prosecute has quietly expired. Our comparison of main courante and plainte sets out where each instrument is genuinely useful and where choosing the log is the wrong call.

There is one exception that matters more than any other. In domestic violence situations an investigation is opened regardless, and officers are directed to take a plainte rather than a simple register entry. Anyone in that position should not treat a main courante as their only step, and the emergency and reporting channels named on that page exist for exactly this reason.

Filing a plainte, and what happens next

A plainte is the act that reports you as the victim of an offence and entrusts an enquiry to the police or the gendarmerie. It is free. It can be filed in person at any commissariat or gendarmerie, by letter to the procureur de la République, or online for property and cyber offences where the perpetrator is unknown, a route that has been available nationwide since October 2024.

A plainte contre X, filed when you do not know who is responsible, is the normal route after a burglary, a theft or a fraud, and it is not a lesser filing. Our guide to filing a criminal complaint walks each route in turn, sets out the prescription periods that apply to each grade of offence, and explains what the procureur can do with the file once it lands.

That page also corrects one of the most persistent misunderstandings in French procedure. A plainte avec constitution de partie civile is not a general paid shortcut into a courtroom. Filing directly, without a prior simple plainte and a waiting period, is permitted only for a narrow set of offence categories, and the deposit that people associate with the route does not fall on aide juridictionnelle recipients at all.

Being in the system: garde à vue

Garde à vue is a coercive measure ordered by a judicial police officer against someone there are plausible reasons to suspect. It is not an arrest in the loose sense and it is not available at will: the Code de procédure pénale ties it to a defined list of purposes, and it can only be used where nothing less will achieve one of them.

The structure is a base period that the procureur can extend once, in writing, and only for offences above a stated seriousness threshold. Longer regimes exist but they are narrower than the internet suggests, and the two most-quoted durations belong to different articles covering different categories of offence. Our garde à vue guide states the durations, the thresholds and the distinction that is routinely got wrong.

The most significant recent change concerns the lawyer. Since a 2024 reform, questioning on the facts can no longer proceed without the lawyer once assistance has been requested, unless the person expressly waives it on the record. The old short window that allowed officers to begin before the lawyer arrived is gone. The lawyer's presence can still be deferred, but only by a written and reasoned decision, and the guide sets out who can order that and for how long.

The substantive defence: legitimate defence

Legitimate defence is the one substantive doctrine in this section rather than a procedural rule, and it belongs to the Code pénal. It works as a cause of criminal irresponsibility: the act still happened, but the person who committed it is not held criminally responsible for it. That framing matters, because it is decided after the fact, by investigators and then a court, on the evidence available to them.

Article 122-5 requires an unjustified attack, a response made at the same time, necessity, and no disproportion between the means used and the seriousness of the attack. Defence of property under the second paragraph is narrower still. Article 122-6 adds a presumption in two specifically defined situations, and the popular belief is that this presumption settles the matter.

It does not. The Cour de cassation treats it as a presomption simple, capable of being defeated by evidence to the contrary. Our page on legitimate defence explains what is in the statutory text, what the courts have built on it, and why the presumption is not the shield it is often described as. It is written as doctrine, not as guidance for conduct, and anyone facing a real situation needs a lawyer rather than a web page.

Paying for it: aide juridictionnelle

Legal representation in a criminal matter is not automatically free, but France operates a substantial legal aid scheme. Aide juridictionnelle is awarded at fixed rates rather than on a sliding scale: an applicant falls into one band or another and receives that rate, with nothing in between. Misreading it as a smooth formula is the single most common error about the scheme.

Two separate tests apply. An income test based on the reference tax income of the household, adjusted for household size, and asset ceilings covering movable and financial assets and property other than the main home. Breaching an asset ceiling blocks aid at every rate, not just the top one.

The amounts change every January. They are re-indexed by an annual circulaire, and applications lodged before a new circulaire takes effect are judged on the previous year's ceilings. That is why we keep the figures on the aide juridictionnelle page rather than here, and why anyone close to a threshold should confirm the current amounts on that page and run the Ministry of Justice eligibility simulator before assuming a refusal. Note also that the scheme reaches a lawyer's work outside the courtroom, including the lawyer who attends a garde à vue, which is why the two subjects are so often researched together.

Living with the record: the casier judiciaire

The casier judiciaire is one single national file, but it is read out in three different bulletins with three different audiences. Bulletin n° 1 is the complete record and reaches only judicial authorities. Bulletin n° 2 is a filtered extract routed to specified public authorities. Bulletin n° 3 is the only extract an individual can request about themselves, and it is free.

Our guide to the casier judiciaire explains what each bulletin contains, how to request your own, and the two routes by which convictions eventually come off: automatic réhabilitation after a clean period, and réhabilitation ordered by a court on application.

The B2, and the routing rule people get wrong

The filtered bulletin deserves its own page because the belief attached to it is both widespread and wrong. A bulletin n° 2 is never issued to you. An employer is a recipient in only one case, work involving minors in a cultural, educational or social activity, and then only where the bulletin is empty. Otherwise it travels from the Casier judiciaire national to a public authority named in the regulations.

If it carries entries, a designated administrative authority receives it and tells the employer only that there are mentions and whether they block the hiring. The employer never learns the offence. Our bulletin n° 2 page sets out who the real recipients are and the two statutory routes to having a conviction excluded from it.

A renumbering already on the books

One structural change is worth knowing before you read any of these pages. An ordonnance adopted in November 2025 rewrites the legislative part of the Code de procédure pénale at constant law, taking effect at the start of 2029, unless it is deferred by decree, which the ordonnance permits up to 1 September 2030. Every procedure code article cited across this section is scheduled to be renumbered.

The rules themselves are not being rewritten by that instrument, but the numbers will move. Each page notes it where relevant, and we will carry the new numbering across the section when it takes effect rather than leaving readers to match old citations against a renumbered code.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is French criminal law in one code or two?

Two. The Code pénal defines offences, penalties and the grounds that remove criminal responsibility, including legitimate defence. The Code de procédure pénale governs the machinery: how a complaint is received, how a suspect may be held, how a case reaches a court, and how a conviction is recorded. Most practical questions turn on the procedure code even when the reader thinks they are asking about the offence.

Does filing a report mean someone will be prosecuted?

No. Filing a plainte reports you as the victim of an offence and triggers an enquiry by the police or the gendarmerie, but the decision to prosecute belongs to the procureur de la République. A main courante does even less: it records a declaration in a register and opens no investigation at all. Domestic violence is the deliberate exception, where an investigation follows regardless.

Who can see my French criminal record?

It depends on which bulletin. The full record goes only to judicial authorities. The filtered bulletin n° 2 is routed administratively to specific public authorities, and even in the narrow private-sector case a designated authority receives it and tells the employer only whether the entries block the hiring. The bulletin n° 3 is the only extract you can request about yourself.

Do I have to pay for a lawyer in a French criminal case?

Not necessarily. Aide juridictionnelle can cover all or part of a lawyer's fees, including the lawyer who attends a garde à vue rather than only work done in a courtroom. Eligibility is decided by which fixed band your reference tax income and assets fall into, and the ceilings change each January, so check the current figures on the aide juridictionnelle page and the Ministry of Justice simulator before assuming you are outside the scheme.

Does French law recognise self-defence?

Yes, as a ground of criminal irresponsibility rather than a permission. Article 122-5 of the Code pénal requires an unjustified attack, a response made at the same time, necessity and no disproportion. Article 122-6 adds a presumption in two narrowly defined situations, but the Cour de cassation treats that presumption as rebuttable rather than absolute. The legitimate defence page sets out how a court applies the test after the fact.