France’s interior ministry is strengthening a powerful tool of the country’s police: fines. A set of minor offenses — the type of wrongdoing that would have formally resulted in a court hearing — is now punished by an on-the-spot fine delivered by a police officer. This leaves the presumed offender with a criminal record without ever encountering a judge, let alone a defense attorney.

Phased in over the last half decade, the range of infractions subject to this new procedure is set to expand once more, bringing the total to over thirty offenses. Legal experts, civil rights advocates, and anti-racism activists decry the reform as opening a major breach in civil rights — weakening bedrock principles such as the presumption of innocence, the right to self-defense, and individualized sentencing.

The changes are tucked away in an interior ministry budgeting bill currently before Parliament that likewise benchmarks €15 billion of new funding over the five years. Taken as a whole, the bill rewards the growing political clout of France’s police unions, whom Emmanuel Macron’s hard-line interior minister Gérald Darmanin has courted since assuming power in July 2020.