French Prime Minister presents action plan against youth violence

After the worst crimes, France is again discussing youth violence. Prime Minister Atal wants to come up with an action plan to hold both students and their parents accountable.

France is once again discussing young violent offenders and an action plan is being launched again. This time by Prime Minister Gabriel Atal, who is now in office for 100 days. He vowed to take ruthless inventory: “All the mayors assure us that only a few are perpetrating this violence and making life hell for everyone in the district. Local politicians know these youths, but their hands are tied.”

Many shocking acts of violence

Look at it and punish it without hesitation. Attal demanded from where 15-year-old Shemsedin was beaten to death in front of the school gates a few weeks ago: in Viry-Chatillon, south of Paris. All five accused, except one, were minors. Reason for her crime: Shemseddin allegedly misbehaved with the sister of one of the convicts.

In Montpellier, a teenager was put into a coma; She was previously bullied because of her revealing, European clothing. In Marseille, a mother and her daughter attacked a school principal. The list goes on and on.

Parents, students and social media are paying attention

There are various reasons for this excess violence, Attal explained. For example, overbearing or neglectful parenting, ruthless individualism and rampant Islamism. Getting to the root of the problem means fighting Islam mercilessly.

These young people increasingly reacted by trampling on republican values ​​and ignoring secularism – the separation of state and religion. “It is unacceptable for a religious ideology to question our laws. A young woman is no longer free to walk around these neighborhoods without a veil if she wants to. The only law in France is the republic,” Attal said. .

The Prime Minister announced various measures. Among other things, aggressive students should be removed from their environment at an early stage and educated in residential school, judicial offenses should be punished faster, parents should be better supported but more accountable. In addition, schools should be open longer so that young people are monitored as little as possible.

As last summer's riots showed, media consumption must be limited. At that time, young people used social networks to challenge themselves to a real destruction competition. “We will regulate it,” Attal said. And we have already taken necessary steps to ban rioters from social media.

No new ideas

Teachers have heard this all too often, but they miss the long-term investment strategy to make schools and communities work better in the long run. That's why teachers' unions and education analysts criticized Atal without addressing the important issue.

Guislain David, a teacher from the SNUIP-FSU union, lamented on BFMTV: “Attal did not mention school staff once in the speech. We need more trained staff: social workers, psychologists, educators.”

In Saint-Denis, north of Paris, teachers have been on strike for six weeks. A cry for help to note that they urgently need more staff. But they are yet to hear back from the ministry.

A new action plan

Representatives from all relevant areas – schools, social work, justice and policing – must now come together to develop an anti-violence plan within eight weeks. But the question has been raised whether this new action plan will be adequate to solve the long-term problems.

The government faces a big and long-term problem: it says youth between the ages of 13 and 17 are significantly more violent and criminal compared to the general population. Statistically, they appear twice as often in the “assaults and injuries” category, four times as often in drug trafficking and seven times as often in armed robbery.

There is no shortage of parsing

And there's really no shortage of analysis. Once Macron takes office, the problem in the suburbs must be tackled at its roots. The newly elected president had drawn up a master plan. When it threatened to be expensive and seemed to promise only long-term success, Macron slipped the so-called “Plan Porleu” into a drawer.

After the riots last summer, then Prime Minister Elizabeth Bourne announced the results of weeks of consultations with local politicians. More recently, the Senate gave its own assessment of the riots this night: the damage was one billion euros and 1,000 people were injured. A total of 50,000 rioters are said to have participated. A third of them are minors.