The mobilization of juvenile justice professionals did not prevent the
Attal Law from being passed. This reform, which will increase the
incarceration of children, lower the age of criminal responsibility
thresholds for some of them, and punish parents in difficulty, is a
further step towards the dismantling of juvenile justice as we have
known it since 1945. ---- Bétharram affair, Le Scouarnec trial: we have
been talking non-stop about the extent of violence against children for
several months. But meanwhile, what are the right and the far right
doing in Parliament? They are once again attacking children's rights.
The treatment of delinquent youth is part of a long history, at the
intersection of child protection and the repression of so-called
"dangerous" classes. If, at the Liberation, a new perspective on
so-called "unhappy" childhoods helped to soften the divide between
"childhood victims" and "childhood culprits," for the past twenty years
we have witnessed a return to repression, to the "incorrigible" youth
who must be subdued.
Gabriel Attal's bill "aimed at restoring the authority of the justice
system over juvenile offenders and their parents" was definitively
adopted on May 19. Despite warnings from the Defender of Rights and
UNICEF about provisions that contradict international conventions on the
rights of the child, and despite the mobilization of professionals.
It doesn't matter that delinquency has been decreasing for twenty years,
that the 1945 ordinance has already been reformed forty times, that
sentences have become harsher over the past ten years[1], suggesting
that the justice system is lax and powerless when it comes to young
people seems to be a winning electoral success. This, in any case, is
what the former Prime Minister defended following the July 2023 riots.
And regardless of whether their origin was the murder of a teenager by
the police, the urgent need was to point out the irresponsibility of
"failing parents" and allow the justice system to incarcerate more
quickly and more frequently.
In their race to the bottom with the National Rally, the Macronists are
thus repeating the same lies about youth that we've been hearing since
the birth of juvenile justice 200 years ago. Young offenders are said to
be increasingly younger, more numerous, and dangerous to society. In the
face of attempts to rewrite history, it is important to place this
reform in the long term.
Working classes, dangerous classes
The first part of the law concerns parents. They will now have to pay a
fine if they fail to attend court hearings, will receive heavier
sentences if the failure to fulfill their family obligations has led the
young person to break the law, and will be held liable for any damage
caused by their child.
Some amendments from the LR and RN sought to go further by cutting child
benefits, while Gérald Darmanin proposed evicting families from their
social housing. Here too, suggesting that delinquency is primarily the
work of bad working-class parents who don't know how to manage their
children rather than the product of our society is nothing new.
In the 19th century, the theories of the "born criminal" by the Italian
criminologist Lombroso, who spoke of the hereditary nature of vice,
justified targeting the working class and its children, who were
inherently dangerous. Even more so if they were foreigners. While these
scientific theories have now been refuted, we are witnessing, in a
context of completely unashamed racism, a renewed focus on the link
between delinquency and immigration. The target here is clearly families
from working-class neighborhoods, those of immigrant origin, or those of
Muslim faith. And behind the families, it is actually populations
suspected of unwillingness to integrate that are being targeted.
Example: the long list of violence inflicted on children in the name of
justice, the "chicken cages" of the Aniane reform school in 1930.
ENPJJ
State Responsibility
On the other hand, nothing will be found in the law in the event that
the failure emanates from the state. Social sector professionals
demonstrated on May 15th to denounce the deterioration of working and
reception conditions for the public. In child protection, reports
warning of the dire situation are coming thick and fast: placement
measures are not being implemented, homes are being described as places
of danger, and prevention associations are closing one after the other.
Faced with the scale of the problems, the Defender of Rights has finally
issued a decision highlighting the serious and massive violations of
children's rights.
Because it was indeed a child in the care of Child Welfare Services
(ASE) who killed a private hire car driver in Marseille in October 2024
after two months of running away. And it is also the public authorities
who are absent when families call for help for their children: a year of
waiting for open educational assistance,
medical-psychological-pedagogical centers completely blocked, and not to
mention the disappearing public services. Neoliberal policies have
exacerbated segregation and social inequality, and to hide this class
violence, the bourgeoisie is scapegoating.
Expeditious Justice
The rest of the law concerns minors more directly. One of the most
important measures is immediate appearance in court from the age of 16.
Not only will this increase sentences[2], but with the principle of a
single hearing and the mitigation of responsibility (misnamed "minority
excuse"), which will now be the exception, juvenile justice after the
age of 16 is being reduced to a trickle. This expeditious justice system
being implemented is, in fact, totally incompatible with the principles
and functioning of juvenile justice since 1945.
Since 1810 and the creation of the Penal Code, the French justice system
has considered that below a certain age (criminal majority), sentences
must be adapted. This is firstly the case with imprisonment, which must
be distinct from that of adults and whose sentences are halved. Then,
placement measures, presented as alternatives to incarceration: these
are the agricultural and penal colonies of the 19th century, the
reformatories, and more recently the Closed Educational Centers (CEF) or
Reinforced Educational Centers (CER).
And since 1945, a specific justice system has operated with different
personnel: youth justice educators, juvenile judges, etc. Punishment
only occurs at a later stage, after the young person found guilty has
undergone an educational measure to become aware of their actions:
reparation measures, citizenship training, community service, placement
in a home or closed center. This follows a logic that has prevailed
since the 1945 ordinance: the primacy of education over punishment.
Of course, there is always a difference between what is written and
practice. Until the 1970s, for example, the state showed total disregard
for the fate of girls, and the practices of correction and child abuse
never disappeared. This is evidenced by the numerous cases of violence
suffered in reeducation boarding schools recounted by former students of
the Bons Pasteurs or other children in care[3]. And above all, despite
the protests, the detention of children has continued. Children as young
as 13 have been detained. There are currently over 900 of them,
incarcerated in juvenile detention centers or juvenile correctional
facilities.
And let's not forget the administrative detention centers, where
children of all ages have been detained. This detention has intensified
since the early 2000s with the Perben II laws. The CEFs and CERs,
supposedly alternatives to prison, are in fact additional places of
deprivation of liberty. Several reports have highlighted the major
dysfunctions that characterize these centers. And very recently,
Mediapart revealed an internal evaluation by the Ministry of Justice
concluding that "integration solutions frequently fail"[4].
Bringing Working-Class Youth into Line
No matter, the CEFs continue to be popular. After Emmanuel Macron
announced the creation of twenty new centers by 2027 (in the end, only
three have been built since 2018) and Gérald Darmanin proposed building
them in Mayotte, under military supervision, the Attal law aims to
facilitate placements in CEFs, for a few months or even a few days.
The law will also create short sentences of one month, and pretrial
detention from the age of 13 for a year. At the same age, a child will
also be able to be placed under house arrest with an electronic tag,
subject to a curfew whose authorized times and locations will be set by
the judge, or even be detained for 12 hours. While for some of the
population, the onset of adulthood is occurring later and later, the end
of childhood for the working class is being delayed. After the reform of
vocational training, attempts at universal national service, and school
uniforms, right-wingers continue to rein in working-class youth.
Read Tal Piterbraut-Merx, La domination oubliée (The Forgotten
Domination), Blast, October 2024, EUR15.
Childhood as victim and childhood as guilty are inseparable. There is no
such thing as a pure and innocent childhood that is naturally
vulnerable[5], just as there is no such thing as a born delinquent.
Repoliticizing childhood would broaden the fight against violence
against those considered second-class, and link it to issues of race and
gender.
Faced with the exploitation of children's rights by the far right, which
is infiltrating parents' groups, we must denounce the various forms of
domination between family, homes, and prisons. To this end, it is urgent
to strengthen the unions of the Judicial Protection of Youth (PJJ) and
social workers, which uphold an emancipatory and liberating vision of
education by and for children.
Paola
Validate
[1]https://www.lemonde.fr/idees/article/2024/04/24/christian-mouhanna-sociologue-en-depit-de-dramatiques-faits-divers-le-nombre-de-mineurs-auteurs-de-delits-baisse_6229499_3232.html.
[2]Eight times more: this is the probability of going to prison
following an immediate appearance compared to a traditional hearing,
according to Virginie Gautron and Jean-Noël Retière, Is Criminal Justice
Discriminatory? An Empirical Study of Decision-Making Practices in Five
Criminal Courts, 2013.
[3]On this subject, see Clémence Davigot's documentary, Les Oubliés de
la Belle Étoile, and the one on Les Mauvaises filles by Emérance Dubas.
[4]https://www.mediapart.fr/journal/france/060525/centres-educatifs-fermes-l-embarrassante-etude-que-l-executif-veut-cacher.
[5]See on this subject the writings left by the writer and philosophy
researcher Tal Piterbraut-Merx, notably
https://www.editionsblast.fr/boutique/p/la-domination-oubliee.
https://www.unioncommunistelibertaire.org/?Loi-Attal-Face-a-la-repression-repolitiser-l-enfance
_________________________________________
A - I N F O S N E W S S E R V I C E
By, For, and About Anarchists
Send news reports to A-infos-en mailing list
A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
Attal Law from being passed. This reform, which will increase the
incarceration of children, lower the age of criminal responsibility
thresholds for some of them, and punish parents in difficulty, is a
further step towards the dismantling of juvenile justice as we have
known it since 1945. ---- Bétharram affair, Le Scouarnec trial: we have
been talking non-stop about the extent of violence against children for
several months. But meanwhile, what are the right and the far right
doing in Parliament? They are once again attacking children's rights.
The treatment of delinquent youth is part of a long history, at the
intersection of child protection and the repression of so-called
"dangerous" classes. If, at the Liberation, a new perspective on
so-called "unhappy" childhoods helped to soften the divide between
"childhood victims" and "childhood culprits," for the past twenty years
we have witnessed a return to repression, to the "incorrigible" youth
who must be subdued.
Gabriel Attal's bill "aimed at restoring the authority of the justice
system over juvenile offenders and their parents" was definitively
adopted on May 19. Despite warnings from the Defender of Rights and
UNICEF about provisions that contradict international conventions on the
rights of the child, and despite the mobilization of professionals.
It doesn't matter that delinquency has been decreasing for twenty years,
that the 1945 ordinance has already been reformed forty times, that
sentences have become harsher over the past ten years[1], suggesting
that the justice system is lax and powerless when it comes to young
people seems to be a winning electoral success. This, in any case, is
what the former Prime Minister defended following the July 2023 riots.
And regardless of whether their origin was the murder of a teenager by
the police, the urgent need was to point out the irresponsibility of
"failing parents" and allow the justice system to incarcerate more
quickly and more frequently.
In their race to the bottom with the National Rally, the Macronists are
thus repeating the same lies about youth that we've been hearing since
the birth of juvenile justice 200 years ago. Young offenders are said to
be increasingly younger, more numerous, and dangerous to society. In the
face of attempts to rewrite history, it is important to place this
reform in the long term.
Working classes, dangerous classes
The first part of the law concerns parents. They will now have to pay a
fine if they fail to attend court hearings, will receive heavier
sentences if the failure to fulfill their family obligations has led the
young person to break the law, and will be held liable for any damage
caused by their child.
Some amendments from the LR and RN sought to go further by cutting child
benefits, while Gérald Darmanin proposed evicting families from their
social housing. Here too, suggesting that delinquency is primarily the
work of bad working-class parents who don't know how to manage their
children rather than the product of our society is nothing new.
In the 19th century, the theories of the "born criminal" by the Italian
criminologist Lombroso, who spoke of the hereditary nature of vice,
justified targeting the working class and its children, who were
inherently dangerous. Even more so if they were foreigners. While these
scientific theories have now been refuted, we are witnessing, in a
context of completely unashamed racism, a renewed focus on the link
between delinquency and immigration. The target here is clearly families
from working-class neighborhoods, those of immigrant origin, or those of
Muslim faith. And behind the families, it is actually populations
suspected of unwillingness to integrate that are being targeted.
Example: the long list of violence inflicted on children in the name of
justice, the "chicken cages" of the Aniane reform school in 1930.
ENPJJ
State Responsibility
On the other hand, nothing will be found in the law in the event that
the failure emanates from the state. Social sector professionals
demonstrated on May 15th to denounce the deterioration of working and
reception conditions for the public. In child protection, reports
warning of the dire situation are coming thick and fast: placement
measures are not being implemented, homes are being described as places
of danger, and prevention associations are closing one after the other.
Faced with the scale of the problems, the Defender of Rights has finally
issued a decision highlighting the serious and massive violations of
children's rights.
Because it was indeed a child in the care of Child Welfare Services
(ASE) who killed a private hire car driver in Marseille in October 2024
after two months of running away. And it is also the public authorities
who are absent when families call for help for their children: a year of
waiting for open educational assistance,
medical-psychological-pedagogical centers completely blocked, and not to
mention the disappearing public services. Neoliberal policies have
exacerbated segregation and social inequality, and to hide this class
violence, the bourgeoisie is scapegoating.
Expeditious Justice
The rest of the law concerns minors more directly. One of the most
important measures is immediate appearance in court from the age of 16.
Not only will this increase sentences[2], but with the principle of a
single hearing and the mitigation of responsibility (misnamed "minority
excuse"), which will now be the exception, juvenile justice after the
age of 16 is being reduced to a trickle. This expeditious justice system
being implemented is, in fact, totally incompatible with the principles
and functioning of juvenile justice since 1945.
Since 1810 and the creation of the Penal Code, the French justice system
has considered that below a certain age (criminal majority), sentences
must be adapted. This is firstly the case with imprisonment, which must
be distinct from that of adults and whose sentences are halved. Then,
placement measures, presented as alternatives to incarceration: these
are the agricultural and penal colonies of the 19th century, the
reformatories, and more recently the Closed Educational Centers (CEF) or
Reinforced Educational Centers (CER).
And since 1945, a specific justice system has operated with different
personnel: youth justice educators, juvenile judges, etc. Punishment
only occurs at a later stage, after the young person found guilty has
undergone an educational measure to become aware of their actions:
reparation measures, citizenship training, community service, placement
in a home or closed center. This follows a logic that has prevailed
since the 1945 ordinance: the primacy of education over punishment.
Of course, there is always a difference between what is written and
practice. Until the 1970s, for example, the state showed total disregard
for the fate of girls, and the practices of correction and child abuse
never disappeared. This is evidenced by the numerous cases of violence
suffered in reeducation boarding schools recounted by former students of
the Bons Pasteurs or other children in care[3]. And above all, despite
the protests, the detention of children has continued. Children as young
as 13 have been detained. There are currently over 900 of them,
incarcerated in juvenile detention centers or juvenile correctional
facilities.
And let's not forget the administrative detention centers, where
children of all ages have been detained. This detention has intensified
since the early 2000s with the Perben II laws. The CEFs and CERs,
supposedly alternatives to prison, are in fact additional places of
deprivation of liberty. Several reports have highlighted the major
dysfunctions that characterize these centers. And very recently,
Mediapart revealed an internal evaluation by the Ministry of Justice
concluding that "integration solutions frequently fail"[4].
Bringing Working-Class Youth into Line
No matter, the CEFs continue to be popular. After Emmanuel Macron
announced the creation of twenty new centers by 2027 (in the end, only
three have been built since 2018) and Gérald Darmanin proposed building
them in Mayotte, under military supervision, the Attal law aims to
facilitate placements in CEFs, for a few months or even a few days.
The law will also create short sentences of one month, and pretrial
detention from the age of 13 for a year. At the same age, a child will
also be able to be placed under house arrest with an electronic tag,
subject to a curfew whose authorized times and locations will be set by
the judge, or even be detained for 12 hours. While for some of the
population, the onset of adulthood is occurring later and later, the end
of childhood for the working class is being delayed. After the reform of
vocational training, attempts at universal national service, and school
uniforms, right-wingers continue to rein in working-class youth.
Read Tal Piterbraut-Merx, La domination oubliée (The Forgotten
Domination), Blast, October 2024, EUR15.
Childhood as victim and childhood as guilty are inseparable. There is no
such thing as a pure and innocent childhood that is naturally
vulnerable[5], just as there is no such thing as a born delinquent.
Repoliticizing childhood would broaden the fight against violence
against those considered second-class, and link it to issues of race and
gender.
Faced with the exploitation of children's rights by the far right, which
is infiltrating parents' groups, we must denounce the various forms of
domination between family, homes, and prisons. To this end, it is urgent
to strengthen the unions of the Judicial Protection of Youth (PJJ) and
social workers, which uphold an emancipatory and liberating vision of
education by and for children.
Paola
Validate
[1]https://www.lemonde.fr/idees/article/2024/04/24/christian-mouhanna-sociologue-en-depit-de-dramatiques-faits-divers-le-nombre-de-mineurs-auteurs-de-delits-baisse_6229499_3232.html.
[2]Eight times more: this is the probability of going to prison
following an immediate appearance compared to a traditional hearing,
according to Virginie Gautron and Jean-Noël Retière, Is Criminal Justice
Discriminatory? An Empirical Study of Decision-Making Practices in Five
Criminal Courts, 2013.
[3]On this subject, see Clémence Davigot's documentary, Les Oubliés de
la Belle Étoile, and the one on Les Mauvaises filles by Emérance Dubas.
[4]https://www.mediapart.fr/journal/france/060525/centres-educatifs-fermes-l-embarrassante-etude-que-l-executif-veut-cacher.
[5]See on this subject the writings left by the writer and philosophy
researcher Tal Piterbraut-Merx, notably
https://www.editionsblast.fr/boutique/p/la-domination-oubliee.
https://www.unioncommunistelibertaire.org/?Loi-Attal-Face-a-la-repression-repolitiser-l-enfance
_________________________________________
A - I N F O S N E W S S E R V I C E
By, For, and About Anarchists
Send news reports to A-infos-en mailing list
A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
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