What the government wants to do against the phenomenon of youth brawls

The government is trying to respond to the phenomenon of brawls between gangs, which grieved the Paris region last week.

Several ministers of the government of Jean Castex met on Monday to put in place a plan to fight against these clashes.

Were present the Ministers of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, of Justice, Éric Dupond-Moretti, and of Education, Jean-Michel Blanquer.

"We all think at this moment of the blood of these children killed for nothing," said the Minister of Justice after a videoconference with his two colleagues, the prefects, prosecutors and rectors of Île-de- France.

This meeting had been fixed by the Minister of the Interior Gérald Darmanin after the death of a schoolboy and a schoolboy, of 14 years, stabbed during different brawls, in Essonne on February 22 and 23.

A revised plan to fight gangs must be adopted by May 1, the justice and interior ministries said in a statement.

Social media monitoring

This plan notably provides for the use of local groups for the treatment of delinquency, on the model of the one set up in Paris, which brings together the police, town hall and educational services under the aegis of the prosecution.

Their goal will be to monitor social networks through which young people can meet to do battle.

Safety around schools, monitoring of school absenteeism and neighborhood mediation must also be reinforced.

"We must be complementary in our actions" declared the Minister of Education, Jean-Michel Blanquer, during a trip to Haute-Saône.

To avoid new tragedies, we need a generalization of "good practices", argued Eric Dupond-Moretti, evoking a "better collaboration between the various public prosecutors" and a tenfold recourse to "prohibitions to appear".

"We must develop" these alternatives to prosecutions which are currently being tested in Bobigny, Montpellier and Senlis and which allow "to extract" young people "from the gang".

Acceleration of procedures

The Keeper of the Seals also highlighted the new Code of Criminal Justice for Minors, which will come into force on September 30 and aims to reduce trial times.

"We will go from extremely long deadlines where we see 16-year-old kids who are tried when they are 22" to "justice that can be done very, very quickly," he said.

"If we let it go and no response occurs, we have a risk of repetition."

According to the Interior Ministry, 357 clashes between gangs were recorded in 2020 against 288 in 2019, an increase of nearly 25%, and three people were killed and 218 injured during clashes last year.

Nationally, the ministry identifies 74 bands, including 46 within the jurisdiction of the Paris police headquarters, which also includes Seine-Saint-Denis, Val-de-Marne and Hauts-de-Seine.