The bill of the Ministry of Justice will be introduced in the Plenary today, Wednesday to speed up procedures staffing and operation of the Judicial Police. The proposed provisions are introduced in the plenary session with the votes of the ND. The opposition has declared a reservation for its final position in the Plenary, with the exception of the KKE which has declared that it will vote against the bill, since its introduction to the relevant parliamentary committee.

The object of the bill is the amendment of some provisions of Law 4963/2022 by which the Judicial Police was established, mainly those concerning the recruitment process of its personnel.

It was predicted in 1836, it is being voted on today

In Greece, the exercise of judicial police duties by a special service was foreseen in the Royal Decree (b.d) of December 31, 1836, but it was quickly abandoned.

The question of establishing judicial police was raised by the Association of Prosecutors in 1987 with its memorandum to the Ministry of Justice.

Three years later, the Society for Forensic Studies published a Brief and Conclusion on “Forensic Policing.” The conclusion spoke of “weaknesses of the investigative work” and “dysfunction of criminal justice due to the lack of a judicial police organically linked with the judicial function of the State”.

Article 36 of Law 2145/1993 provided for the possibility of establishing, by presidential decree, a Judicial Police service “under the direct direction of the relevant district attorney”. The purpose of the Judicial Police was to “assist the public prosecutor in his duties by carrying out: a. Preliminary investigations, b. Preliminary examinations, c. Collection of necessary evidence to confirm the commission of a crime and to discover the perpetrator, and d. Execution of criminal court decisions, arrest warrants, temporary detention and forced arraignment, as well as any other procedural act of the criminal procedure at the discretion of the competent prosecutor”. However, the presidential decree was not issued.

In December 2002, the Plenary Session of the Prosecutor’s Office of the Supreme Court referred to the need to establish a Judicial Police. The issue was also discussed at a special event of the Athens Bar Association, the Forensic Studies Society and the Law Department of the University of Athens, on January 27, 2010, on the topic of “Judicial Police”.

From time to time, legislative committees and groups were established work with the object of establishing a judicial police, but without result. In the last 25 years, the Judicial Police has been announced by the respective Ministers of Justice at least five times. An attempt was made in 2017-2018 during the ministry of Stavros Kontonis, but the bill remained in consultation.

Law 4963/2022 provided for the establishment of a judicial police in the Ministry of Justice, which includes a civil and police sector. According to article 1 of Law 4963/2022, the purpose of establishing the Judicial Police is to “assist the work of the judicial and prosecutorial authorities and ensure the proper functioning of the judicial services by assigning police duties to specialized personnel of the Ministry of Justice , as well as tasks that require special scientific knowledge.

With the bill that is being discussed today in the plenary session, among other things, a new recruitment and staffing procedure for the Judicial Police is introduced, given that, according to the Explanatory Report, “the actual operation of the Judicial Police remains to this day a blank letter”.

The parties

In the drafting phase of the bill in the competent parliamentary committee, SYRIZA, PASOK, KKE, Hellenic Solution, Spartans, Niki and Pleussi Eleftherias did not deny the necessity of operating Judicial Police. However, they expressed reservations about their final position, raising reservations and objections to individual provisions. The KKE has stated from the beginning that it will vote against the bill.

“The Judicial Police has been established by a previous law. With the bill, this institution takes shape,” said ND rapporteur Dimitris Kouvelas. The aim, said the ND MP, is to have the officers of the political sector and the police sector of the Judicial Police in their organic positions at the beginning of next year. Referring to the changes in the recruitment procedures for police and civilian personnel, Dimitris Kouvelas said that the goal is to speed up the whole process in a way that does not come at the expense of objectivity, meritocracy and transparency, i.e. recruitment through ASEP.

“I don’t think that the positions of the members of the judiciary can be filled with the ASEP general competition. All the previous reports speak of a separate, ad hoc competition and this should make us extremely suspicious and cautious in order not to go into a process that is fruitless”, said SYRIZA rapporteur Theofilos Xanthopoulos and pointed out: “From its founding act this service was to co-assist all justice, criminal, administrative and political. With the bill, only prosecutors and prosecutors are monitored, and it is a very serious question whether these people will be able to assist, help judges of other branches and how this will be done.”

And Mr. Xanthopoulos and the other representatives of the opposition parties referred to the provisions of the bill on the conditions that must be met by the candidates and pointed out that criteria are being introduced that effectively exclude the participation of women in the police personnel of the Judicial Police. They also raised the issue of the person who will head the Judicial Police and whether he will be a retired judicial officer.

“With the conditions you set, women are excluded from filling the positions of the Judicial Police”, pointed out PASOK’s special buyer Nadia Giannakopoulou.

“With the bill, emphasis is placed on the police department at the same time that nothing is guaranteed about the issues of providing scientific and technical assistance to judicial and prosecutorial officers for which there is indeed a need today”, has stated the special buyer of the KKE Maria Komninaka.

“The Judicial Police must operate on the model of the American Judicial Police, known as the FBI. In other words, to have an operational arm, to deal with organized crime and to solve cases of major importance”, said the specialist buyer of Hellenic Solution, Pavlos Sarakis. The MP also called on the government to answer whether it “appoints” for the position of the head of the Judicial Police “the recently retired Prosecutor of the Supreme Court, Isidoros Doyako”.

“We cannot understand with what scientific documentation the ministry arrived at this ratio of police and civilian personnel”, said the specialist buyer of the Spartans Ioannis Kontis and added that the scoring with previous military service must be eliminated, because it is definitely to the detriment of women’s choice.

The assessment that the criteria for prior military service will lead to the exclusion of women from the Judicial Police was also expressed by Niki’s special buyer, Giorgos Apostolakis. Like the other opposition parties, Niki also questions the head of the Judicial Police and objects to a retired senior or senior judicial officer heading the Directorate of the Judicial Police.

“Too many points of provisions move in an old party spirit and reflect an attempt of the 1950s to reward with points, with distinctions the pure and the elite”, observed Eleni Karageorgopoulou, special buyer of Plefsis Eleftherias. “Women who do not serve in the Armed Forces lose the possibility of scoring and are therefore excluded from the competition,” pointed out Mrs. Karageorgopoulou.

Zoi Konstantopoulou, president of the KO of Free Navigation, intervened in the discussion. “Height predictions are an outdated method of discriminating against women. There is a fixed jurisprudence of the Greek courts and the Council of State. It is not allowed to come in 2023 a provision about height, and about a minimum height, which ultimately means fewer women. It is not allowed to come with a provision with an over-provision of military service, which by definition women have not served. It is not allowed to discriminate about the prohibition of tattooing. With the bill, it is not allowed to have visible tattoos on a candidate to be hired in the Judicial Police if it is judged that they are against the purpose and philosophy”, pointed out Zoe Konstantopoulou.

Transparent and unalterable procedures

“If there were intentions to treat men and women unequally, we would not have had many recruitments of women in the repeated competitions held for the recruitment of special guards. Too many women have passed through these bodies. It is not a men’s privilege”, replied the Minister of Justice Giorgos Floridis and added: “The height is for the police personnel, it is not for the personnel of the political sector. Police personnel are for guarding or trying to keep trials running smoothly. You know, many times, what tensions are created there, where the police have to intervene. So you need a regular policeman there. That’s why these are put in place.”

The Deputy Minister of Justice, Ioannis Bougas, referred to the responsibilities and duties of the staff of the Judicial Police. “The goal of the police sector of the Judicial Police is to gradually release, until June 30, 2024, the Hellenic Police from the tasks it performs today to assist the work of justice, so that the police officers, 2,000 to 2,500 from the Hellenic Police, to be able to carry out purely police duties from now on,” said the Deputy Minister of Justice. In relation to the political sector of the Judicial Police, Ioannis Bougas said that he will be in charge of conducting a preliminary examination and providing scientific and technical assistance to judicial and prosecutorial officers on matters whose analysis and study require special knowledge of science.

The Deputy Minister of Justice also stated that “the additional allocation of those who have served in the Special Forces or as Reserve Officers is foreseen because these people have acquired skills, they have the physical strength, but they also have the mental resources, which are beneficial in the performance of their duties their”.