Paris (AFP)

The Ministers of the Interior, Justice and Education are meeting Monday with prefects, prosecutors and rectors of Ile-de-France to respond to the phenomenon of brawls between young people, which grieved the Paris region last week.

This meeting scheduled from 12:00 am by videoconference was announced by Gérald Darmanin after the death of a schoolboy and a schoolboy, both aged 14, stabbed during different brawls, in Essonne on 22 and 23 February.

Upstream, the Minister of the Interior sent a note on Thursday to all the prefects of France asking them to "reactivate the plan to fight gangs".

In this note consulted by AFP, he asks them to carry out before March 10 a "departmental diagnosis", with a "history" and a "map" of the clashes, the age of the young people involved or their use or not. weapons and social networks.

On the basis of this diagnosis and "depending on the importance of the phenomenon" the minister asks the prefects to implement a "departmental plan of identification, support, preventive information and awareness of vulnerable groups" as well as resources "investigation and fight" against gangs.

The Minister also recommends resorting "according to the context" to local groups for the treatment of delinquency on the subject of gangs, on the model of that set up in Paris, which associates the police, town hall and educational services under the aegis of the parquet.

According to the entourage of Eric Dupond-Moretti, the Ministry of Justice is counting on the use of "prohibitions to appear" as an alternative to prosecution, currently in experimentation in Bobigny, Montpellier and Senlis.

They "work well and allow a young person to be removed from a gang," assures those around him.

The entourage of the Keeper of the Seals also highlights the promulgation on Saturday in the Official Journal of the new Code of Criminal Justice for Minors, which will come into force on September 30 and should make it possible to reduce trial times.

According to the Ministry of the Interior, 357 clashes between gangs were recorded in 2020 in France against 288 in 2019, which represents an increase of nearly 25%.

Three people were killed and 218 injured in these clashes.

Conversely, in Paris, they have declined in recent years, according to the Ministry of Justice, which recorded 112 gang phenomena in 2017, 99 in 2018, 89 in 2019 and 83 in 2020, as well as eight deaths between 2017. and 2020.

At the national level, the Interior identifies 74 gangs, including 46 located within the jurisdiction of the Paris police headquarters, which also includes Seine-Saint-Denis, Val-de-Marne and Hauts-de-Seine .

© 2021 AFP