The French president and government want to punish the perpetrators, some very young, of urban violence in France, but they are still studying hypotheses, such as the recurring idea about the right to impose economic sanctions on parents.
“We should be able to easily and cheaply penalize families on the first offence, a kind of minimum first offence fee,” Macron said late Monday during a visit to police headquarters in the capital.
Last Friday, at the height of the nights of violence in response to the death, on June 27, in Nanterre, de Nahel, 17, shot dead by a police officer, had appealed to the “responsibility of parents “of” keeping minors home, who make up a large part of the rioters.”
“It is not up to the Republic to replace them,” he insisted.
However, on Monday night, when the violence had subsided, Macron said he intended to act “on a case by case” basis and “not necessarily” by suspending family allowances.
French Justice Minister Eric Dupond-Moretti also pointed the finger at the parents, in a circular sent to prosecutors in all French courts.
“Whenever the parents can exercise parental authority and do not do so, there is criminal responsibility that I intend to put into practice,” he declared, recalling the penalties provided: two years in prison and a fine of 30,000 euros.
Far from gaining unanimous support from the political class, the speeches were denounced as “cynical” by left-wing politicians.
Ali Rabeh, mayor of Trappes, a municipality west of Paris with a high poverty rate, was quoted as saying by the France-Presse news agency (AFP), criticized Macron for “add fuel to the fire”.
Rabeh recalled that the population of the neighborhoods where violence is concentrated is mostly made up of “single-parent families” and described situations in which the mother “is working alone to try to fill the fridge”, for which reason “she is not present when the child leaves school and walks down the street.
When a child is the object of an educational measure as a result of an infraction, “a specialized educator comes to accompany the mother,” he explained. But “a very high number of educational measures are not applied, due to lack of means, by the Ministry of Justice”, she stressed.
When a child is the object of an educational measure as a result of an infraction, he continued, “a specialized educator will accompany the mother.”
The suspension of family allowances for parents of children who miss school was approved in 2010, during the tenure of Nicolas Sarkozy, the then right-wing French president.
During the 2012 campaign, he even promised to extend the sentence to juvenile offenders, but was ultimately defeated. His Socialist successor, François Hollande (2012-17), revoked the measure.
Since then, Nicolás Sarkozy’s party, Os Republicanos (LR), has relaunched the idea in the Senate and the National Assembly with bills that never materialized.
Some municipalities, such as the city of Valence, led by Nicolas Daragon (LR), have approved financial sanctions against the families of minors who are “called to order or convicted of disturbing the peace”, depriving them of social benefits paid by the city.
In Nice, a family can be evicted from their social housing following the conviction of a family member, specifically for drug trafficking.
On the center-right, Modem’s president, François Bayrou, Macron’s main ally, shares the principle of an “immediate sanction whenever there is a slip.”
“Obviously, when it comes to small children, the sanction is directed at families,” he told French radio LCI, noting that there should not be a single response that consists of “depriving [as mães] part of the minimum income that sustains them”.
“If we abolish subsidies and social assistance, we will be adding misery upon misery,” insisted the communist Fabien Roussel, on the France2 television channel.
The police officers Macron met with on Monday also did not support the idea of appealing to the parents.
“The merchants, Mr. President, are the ones who have asked you for peace of mind in the last two days, because all this confusion is harming their businesses,” they said.
Source: TSF
