The latest violence involving minors in recent days is not necessarily representative of a generality in France.
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Several acts of violence involving minors were observed in just a few days in France.
An anxiety-inducing accumulation which could lead one to believe that violence among minors is on the increase.
Yet despite their gravity and the impression of repetition, there would not necessarily be an increase in violence.
Monday evening, a 14-year-old girl was found drowned in Argenteuil.
Two suspects were arrested: they are classmates of only 15 years old.
The same day, a teenage girl of the same age found herself between life and death after a brawl that occurred in Champigny-sur-Marne in Val-de-Marne.
On Tuesday, another fight between two groups of teenagers left five injured in the 16th arrondissement of Paris.
A week earlier, it was a teenage girl who died after being stabbed during a brawl in Essonne.
These extremely violent and tragically ending facts involved minors.
An accumulation of tragedies in a very short time that could suggest an increase in juvenile violence in France.
“There is a magnifying effect because indeed these acts are repeated and brought together and there are deaths.
But there is not an increase in violence among minors in France, ”explains Martine Batt, university professor in psychology at the University of Lorraine.
The judicial expert at the Nancy Court of Appeal, moreover specifies that "if the detention for minors has existed for a very long time, it is because there was already a need to protect society from these minors. potentially dangerous ".
Spotlight effect
The facts reported in recent days are not more violent than usual, but it is their addition that would create this anxiety-inducing effect.
“It's a great classic.
We put in series two or three miscellaneous facts, one of which was particularly shocking on an emotional level, either because the authors were very young, or because it is very bloody, analyzes Laurent Mucchielli, sociologist and research director at the CNRS.
But in reality it happens all the time, all year round, every year and most of the time it does not interest anyone.
A particularly striking news item then becomes the spotlight of others with similar points.
For the author of the book
The delinquency of the young
, the error is then to affix generalities on facts "that nobody has analyzed in detail".
According to him, we should not transform simple various facts, however dramatic they may be, into facts of society.
Networks are not the cause, but the amplifier
What has changed for several years, however, and which contributes to this panic, is the dissemination of information.
“Now the events are filmed and broadcast on the networks.
The images are striking, even traumatic and we are more concerned by them ”, comments Martine Batt.
It is also impossible to deny the impact of social networks in these cases.
“This multiplies the classic conflicts between young people because it is a potentially stronger sounding board.
It can amplify things or make them easier to circulate, ”analyzes Laurent Mucchielli.
For her part, Martine Batt admits that harassment on social networks is something "terrible", a violence that "spreads inside, but is also exerted outside and can lead to social disinsertion, suicide and, in this case, murder ”.
For the two experts, however, networks do not create new problems, because the causes of conflicts between young people remain the same as before.
"Discrepancy between the futility of the motive and the gravity of the facts"
In this regard, Martine Batt, as a judicial expert for twenty-five years, observes a common point in her expertise with young people on violent facts.
“The starting point is often futile.
It can start from a glance, from a jealousy and it is perceived very violently in adolescents because they are in full construction.
We are always struck by the gap between the futility of the motive and the gravity of the facts.
This is specific to dealing with adolescents, who have not yet reached a level of maturity that allows them to be fully aware of the consequences of their actions.
"
All this violence is therefore not to be analyzed as a new social fact, although Martine Batt recognizes that confinement may have played a role.
“Adolescents need to evolve in the interaction to be well.
When they see each other, talk, exchange, drink shots, it is an escape and it softens morals.
There, they are deprived of it.
"
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Miscellaneous
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Fight
Teenager
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Violence