A Justice for Petty Crime: Urban Police Courts between the Meuse and the Rhin under the Consulate and the Empire

This article analyses the establishment, functioning and activity of the police courts (tribunaux de simple police) in three cities of the Belgian and Rhine departments which were annexed to the French Empire during the Consulate and the Empire. Situated at the bottom of the judicial hierarchy drawn up by the reforms of the revolutionary decade, the police courts summarily judged offences against penal codes and municipal police decrees carrying sentences not exceeding three days in prison or the value of three days’ work. The defendants were of modest origin, but they belonged to the urban community. They were the perpetrators of minor offences that challenged the good order of the city or were referred to the courts as perpetrators of verbal abuse or minor violence. Within these municipal police courts, the justices of the peace presided, while from the Consulate onwards, the police commissioners, or the deputy mayors, fulfilled the functions of the public prosecutor.