Difference between arrest and custody in France: rights

The difference between arrest and custody in France comes down to one point: an arrest brings a person under police control, while garde à vue is a separate investigative detention, governed by statute and timed to the hour.

How do arrest and police custody differ?

French criminal procedure separates the physical act of being taken in from the legal status that follows it. That status decides which clock is running and which rights you hold. It also decides whether you may stand up and leave.

Arrest and custody are different steps

Police custody in France holds a suspect at a police station or gendarmerie premises for the needs of criminal investigations. It is not a conviction, and it is not a prison sentence.

An arrested person taken to a police station is not automatically in custody. The authorities may instead question that person in a voluntary interview. Which of the two you are in is a question a lawyer establishes early. The French criminal justice system attaches different consequences to each status.

When is an interview voluntary?

A suspect questioned in a voluntary interview, or audition libre, may leave at any time. A person formally placed in custody may not. That right to leave is the clearest line between the two situations.

A voluntary interview has no fixed statutory duration, and it can turn into custody. The fact that you were free to leave earlier does not prevent investigators from lawfully deciding to hold you later. In practice, an interview that seems informal can still change your position.

A summons from the police or gendarmerie is not optional: you must attend. If attending is genuinely impossible, you may explain this to the service and ask for another appointment.

When may custody be ordered?

Under Article 62-2 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, custody requires plausible grounds to suspect that the person committed or attempted an offence punishable by imprisonment. Suspicion alone is not enough. Custody must also be the only way to achieve at least one objective that the law lists:

• Securing the investigation: carrying out acts that need the suspect present, preserving evidence from being altered or destroyed, and stopping an ongoing offence.

• Protecting others: preventing pressure on victims, witnesses or their relatives, and preventing collusion with suspected accomplices.

• Ensuring presentation: making sure the suspect can be brought before the public prosecutor.

Only a judicial police officer may order custody, either on their own initiative or on the prosecutor's instructions, and the prosecutor must be informed from the outset. A child under 13 cannot enter custody. For a child aged 10 to under 13, a separate exceptional holding measure may apply for an offence punishable by at least 5 years' imprisonment. It normally lasts up to 12 hours, with an exceptional further 12 hours.

How long can custody last?

The duration of custody is set in hours, and each extension needs its own written justification. One point worth knowing: what matters is when the clock started, not when the paperwork was completed.

The ordinary limit and its extension

The answer to how long French police can hold you, in an ordinary case, has three parts:

• Initial period: up to 24 hours, and custody may end sooner.

• Ordinary extension: up to a further 24 hours, making 48 hours in total, only for an offence punishable by at least 1 year's imprisonment and where continued custody meets a statutory need.

• Authorising authority: the public prosecutor in a police investigation, or the investigating judge in a judicial investigation.

Article 63 requires that authorisation to be written and reasoned; a second day is never automatic. Before the decision, the suspect can make observations against further custody. In our assessment, this is a moment when a lawyer's arguments carry real weight.

When does the custody clock start?

The custody period starts at the first deprivation of liberty for the same alleged facts. It does not start when you reach the station. A person apprehended at 15:00 who arrives at 16:00 normally sees the initial period expire at 15:00 the next day.

Official guidance counts time from placement in a sobering cell when that comes first. In its traffic-offence example, the clock starts with the alcohol or drugs test, not later station tests. When police custody begins immediately after a voluntary interview with no earlier coercion, Article 63 counts from the interview's start. Earlier custody for the same facts also counts towards the limit.

Longer limits and children's cases

Qualifying serious or organised-crime procedures can take custody to 72 or 96 hours in total, through further written, reasoned judicial decisions. Exceptional terrorism-related circumstances can permit up to 144 hours with judicial authorisation. Since 15 June 2025, a narrow drug-trafficking provision allows up to 120 hours where a medical certificate confirms narcotics in the body and fitness for custody. A separate additional 24-hour provision for its own specified offences took effect on 20 August 2026.

For children aged 13 to under 16, custody starts at 24 hours. A further 24 hours requires an offence punishable by at least 5 years and judicial authorisation after the child has been presented. Between 16 and under 18, the initial limit is also 24 hours, and an ordinary extension requires an offence punishable by at least 1 year.

What rights does a suspect have in custody?

Rights in custody are tied to specific moments: notification at the start, the lawyer before questioning, the doctor on request. Each one has its own timing.

Notification, language and silence

At the start of custody, officers must tell the detainee, in a language they understand, that they are in custody and how long it may last, including any extension. They must state the suspected offence, its presumed date and place, the grounds for custody and the rights notified at the start of custody. A written rights statement is also handed over. The law prescribes this content rather than a single spoken script.

A detainee who does not understand French has the right to an interpreter for that notification and, where needed, for interviews and lawyer consultations. Interpretation may be remote. Checking the language skills of the English-speaking lawyer in France you instruct matters, because imprecise communication during custody creates procedural risks that are hard to correct.

After giving your identity, you may answer questions, make a statement or remain silent. Statements are recorded in written minutes. If a record is inaccurate, you may ask for a correction or an objection to be noted before signing. Cabinet Georges Parastatis recommends reading every record before signing it.

Access to a lawyer during questioning

You may request a chosen or appointed lawyer at the start of custody or later; a child must have one. For custody beginning on or after 1 July 2024, questioning generally cannot proceed without a requested lawyer, unless you expressly waive assistance or a reasoned exception applies. If the chosen lawyer cannot attend within 2 hours, officers must seek an appointed one. The lawyer has a private consultation of up to 30 minutes, renewed on extension, attends interviews and sees specified records, not the whole file. Cabinet Georges Parastatis intervenes 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Health, contact and custody conditions

You may ask for a doctor to assess whether continued custody is compatible with your health. Officers must normally take steps to arrange it within 3 hours of the request, and a further examination may be requested on extension. Since 21 November 2024, limited extension cases allow a video examination with safeguards. Since 1 July 2024, you may also ask officers to notify a person you designate and, separately, your employer, normally within 3 hours. This is not a private call: contact may be delayed or refused on specified grounds.

Investigative acts involving the detainee may include interviews, confrontations, searches and identification sessions. A full strip search must be essential, ordered by a judicial police officer and carried out by a person of the same sex in a closed place. Custody must respect dignity through rest, water, meals and a clean cell.

What happens when custody ends?

Custody ends in one of three ways, and none of them is a verdict. What matters is which path the prosecutor chooses and what it allows the defence to do next.

Release or a summons

The outcomes at the end of custody are distinct:

• Release without immediate prosecution: you leave, though the investigation may continue and proceedings may follow later.

• Release with a summons: you leave with a date to appear before the court.

• Transfer to a court authority: you are not released from the station but taken before a magistrate for the next decision.

The distinction that carries weight here is between the end of detention and the end of the case.

Presentation before a court authority

Transfer for a judicial decision is called court presentation, or défèrement. It is not an extension of police custody.

Presentation normally takes place on the day custody ends. If that is impossible, a separately regulated court holding period allows presentation within 20 hours of custody ending; otherwise the person must be released.

After presentation, the case may go to an immediate trial or be referred to an investigating judge. Pre-trial detention may be requested, but it is never the automatic result of custody.

Later restrictions and procedural challenges

Judicial supervision can impose conditions during proceedings without sending you to prison. Remand in custody is a separate measure from police custody. Bail is not a route out of French police custody.

Cabinet Georges Parastatis examines the police procedure for irregularities that may ground a nullity challenge, as part of its criminal defence work in Paris. A challenge to an unlawful search or an over-extended custody period must be raised before any defence on the merits. That order decides whether the argument can be heard at all.