Judith Sutherland [researcher, Human Rights Watch Europe and Central Asia Division]: "On February 7, 2008, the French parliament enacted a law allowing for the continued detention of offenders who have already completed their prison sentences, purportedly to prevent them re-offending. The law empowers a commission of three judges to impose an additional one-year term in special detention centers if an offender is found to be dangerous and likely to reoffend by a multidisciplinary panel of experts. The one-year detention period can be renewed indefinitely, and the measure may be applied to individuals convicted before the law entered into effect but who have not completed their sentences as of September 1, 2008.

The measure is incompatible with France's obligations under the European Convention for Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. While the government argued that detention to prevent recidivism is an administrative security measure, deprivation of liberty of this type constitutes a criminal sanction. The sanction is not being imposed as a result of a criminal conviction but purportedly to prevent some potential, unknown, unspecified, unforeseeable crime. The European Court of Human Rights has already held that detention powers cannot be used as "a justification for the re-detention or continued detention of a person who has served a sentence after conviction of a specific criminal offence where there is a suspicion that he might commit a further similar offence."

As Human Rights Watch has argued, the preventive detention scheme under the new law violates the prohibition on arbitrary detention and fair trial standards at the heart of international human rights law, including the right to presumption of innocence and the right not to be punished twice for the same crime. It also runs foul of the prohibition on subjecting anyone to a heavier penalty than the one that was applicable at the time the offense was committed (the principle of non-retroactivity of a criminal sanction).

A broad spectrum of opinion opposed the law, including leading national human rights organizations such as the Human Rights League (Ligue des Droits de l'Homme), the quasi-governmental National Consultative Commission on Human Rights, the national bar association (Conseil National des Barreaux), and Robert Badinter, a former justice minister. In addition, the Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights Thomas Hammarberg has in the past expressed concern about the compatibility of this type of measure with the rule of law. Opponents in Parliament have already asked the Constitutional Court to evaluate whether the text of the law is compatible with the French Constitution."