How to File a Criminal Complaint in France: Porter Plainte Explained

Porter plainte is the step that turns something that happened to you into a case the French justice system has to look at. Until a plainte exists, there is usually no file, no investigator assigned and no prosecutor deciding anything. That is true however serious the facts were and however many people you told.

The process itself is free, it is not reserved to French nationals or residents, and no lawyer is required to start it. What trips people up is choosing the wrong channel, missing a prescription deadline, or assuming that paying a deposit lets them force an investigation when the prosecutor has declined.

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

What filing a plainte actually does

Service-Public sets out the effect in one line: "Le dépôt de plainte declenche une enquête penale confiee a la police ou a la gendarmerie." The plainte is the trigger, and it identifies you as the person claiming to have been harmed by an offence.

Officers are required to register your complaint, whichever commissariat or gendarmerie you go to, and are not entitled to send you away because the offence happened in another district. You receive a recepisse confirming that the complaint was filed, which is what insurers, banks and employers will ask you for.

Bring whatever supports the account: medical certificates, photographs, screenshots, invoices, bank statements, the names and contact details of witnesses. Evidence gathered at the time is worth far more than evidence reconstructed months later.

If your aim is only to have facts recorded rather than investigated, that is a different instrument entirely, and the difference is set out on our page on the main courante and how it differs from a plainte.

Filing in person

Go to any commissariat de police or gendarmerie brigade in France. There is no requirement to use the one nearest the offence, and no requirement to have an appointment, although some stations offer one.

You will be interviewed, your statement will be taken down, and you will be asked to sign it. Read it before signing, because that document is what the prosecutor reads. Correct anything that is wrong or missing, including dates, amounts and the identity of witnesses.

Ask explicitly to deposer une plainte. If you say only that you want to signaler something, you may end up with a register entry that opens nothing.

Filing online, nationwide since 15 October 2024

Since 15 October 2024 the online complaint service run by the Ministère de l'Intérieur has been available across the whole country, replacing the earlier pre-plainte arrangement that still required a visit to a station to complete the filing. It is free and is reached through masecurite.interieur.gouv.fr.

The scope is deliberately narrow. It covers atteintes aux biens, offences against your property, committed in France by a perpetrator you cannot identify: theft of a phone, a car or a bank card, burglary, criminal damage such as a scratched car or graffiti, and fraud committed offline. It also covers abus de confiance, délit de fuite, illegal dumping of waste and forced mail-order sales. Bank-card fraud has its own service, Perceval.

Two categories fall outside it. If you know who did it, the online service is not available and you file in person or by letter. If the matter is an internet scam, the THESEE platform covers it: ransomware, a hacked mailbox used to impersonate you, phishing, a fake commercial site, a fake seller on a classified-ads site, and blackmail including in an online relationship. Using THESEE is recommended but not compulsory, and the police cannot require you to use it.

Identification is required. The service works through FranceConnect or an equivalent verified identity, and your documents are kept in your account. Serious offences against the person are not filed this way, and a victim of violence should go to a station or use the dedicated reporting routes.

Writing to the procureur de la République

You can bypass the police entirely and send your complaint directly to the procureur de la République at the tribunal judiciaire for the place where the offence occurred or where the suspect lives. This is useful when you have been turned away, when the matter is documentary, or when you want the account in your own words.

Set out your civil status and contact details, a full and dated narrative of the facts, the harm suffered, the names of any witnesses, and copies of your evidence. Send copies, never originals, and use recorded delivery so that you can prove the date of receipt.

That date matters. It is the reference point for the three month period that opens the constitution de partie civile route described below.

Plainte contre X

When you do not know who is responsible, you file a plainte contre X. It is a normal complaint in every other respect, and it is what most burglary, theft and fraud complaints are.

Naming nobody does not weaken the file. The investigation is directed at identifying the perpetrator, and if that succeeds the case proceeds as it would have done had you been able to name them from the start.

The deadlines

Prescription is the outer limit on prosecution, and once it has passed a complaint can no longer succeed. Service-Public gives the general periods as one year for a contravention, six years for a delit and twenty years for a crime.

Longer periods apply to certain serious crimes, including terrorism, organised drug trafficking and war crimes, at thirty years, while crimes against humanity are imprescriptible. Where the offence was concealed, the starting point is deferred, subject to long stops.

Special rules protect victims who were minors. For sexual offences and for grave attacks on physical integrity such as murder, torture or serious violence, the period runs from the victim's eighteenth birthday rather than from the date of the facts. Other offences against a minor keep the ordinary starting point.

Do not rely on a main courante to hold the position. A register entry does not interrupt prescription, so the deadline keeps running while nothing is being investigated.

What happens after you file

The police or gendarmerie conduct the enquiry and send the file to the procureur, who then chooses. The prosecutor can open a prosecution before the criminal court, use an alternative such as a mediation or a composition penale, request the opening of a judicial investigation, or close the file with a classement sans suite.

A classement sans suite is a prosecutorial decision, not a finding that you were lying. Files are commonly closed because the perpetrator was never identified or because the evidence was judged insufficient to sustain a charge.

If the file is closed, you have options. You can send the additional evidence and ask for the decision to be reconsidered, you can complain to the procureur general, or, in the cases described below, you can go to an investigating judge.

Claiming compensation is a separate step from securing a prosecution. A victim who wants damages constitutes themselves partie civile, which can be done during the proceedings once a case is under way.

Plainte avec constitution de partie civile: the rule people get wrong

This is the route that forces a juge d'instruction to look at your case, and it is widely described online as a way of paying to have your complaint taken seriously. That description is wrong, and acting on it wastes months.

Article 85 of the Code de procédure pénale makes the complaint admissible only if you show either that the procureur has told you they will not prosecute, or that three months have passed since you lodged a complaint with the prosecutor or with a judicial police service. Without one of those two things, the complaint is not admissible at all.

The exception is narrow and specific. The prior complaint condition does not apply where the matter is a crime, an offence under the press law of 29 July 1881 such as defamation or public insult, or an offence under the electoral code. Everything else waits.

There is also money involved, but not in the way people assume. Under article 88, the investigating judge records the filing and, according to your resources, fixes a consignation to be lodged with the court registry, together with the deadline for lodging it, failing which the complaint is inadmissible.

The consignation is a guarantee, not a fee for service, and it is returned where no civil fine is imposed. Crucially, it is only due where aide juridictionnelle has not been granted: a recipient of legal aid is not required to lodge it, and the judge may in any event dispense a party from it.

The complaint itself is addressed in writing to the doyen des juges d'instruction at the competent tribunal judiciaire, and it must state that you are constituting yourself partie civile. Given the admissibility conditions and the consequences of getting them wrong, this is the stage at which most people take a lawyer. It is never available for a contravention, and it can be made either by dated signed letter or by oral declaration before the investigating judge. A separate route, citation directe, lets a victim summon an identified person before the criminal court without any prior complaint.

Choosing the right route

If the offence is against your property and you do not know who did it, the online service is the fastest way in. If a person is identified, or the offence is against you personally, go in and file in person.

If you have been turned away, or you want the full account on the record in your own words with your documents attached, write to the procureur and keep proof of the date. If the prosecutor then declines or three months pass in silence, the constitution de partie civile route opens on the terms above.

A fourth route, visioplainte, allows the complaint to be taken by a police officer or gendarme by videoconference from your home or another private place, after identification through FranceConnect. It is available only for certain offences, and the service checks your situation before giving you a slot.

If the incident involved a physical confrontation, the standard a court applies to a claim of self-defence is a separate question, covered on our page on legitimate defence under the Code pénal. Our France legal guide sets out the wider procedural material.