Many presidential candidates 2022 criticize the laxity of the repression of the youngest. However, many measurements are already applied.
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Right As at the far right, the presidential election candidates intend to tighten the legal response to the offenses committed by minors. Valerie Pécresse wants a “doubling the Number of closed educational centers “, just like Marine Le Pen . They believe that the criminal majority must be lowered at 16, “to take into account the evolution of crime”. Valérie Pécresse and Eric Zemmour still propose to sanction parents. The first imagine, at the scale of big cities, a “Conseil des Rights and Families” , which could suspend the allocations of “faulty parents”; the second wants the Remove with “parents whose parents whose parents children are violent “.
So many proposals that suggest that juvenile justice is lax and frozen, even though it has known, for two decades, many reforms in the direction of hardening – until the introduction, in September 2021, a penal code specifically devoted to minors. What would the new proposals of these candidates change in relation to the current situation?
Lower the criminal majority
already exists in part
In his Project for 2022, M me Pécresse states wanting to lower the criminal majority at 16 years. Same thing for M me Le Pen, who estimates “necessary that the minors of 16 years be judged as adults “, breaking with the ancient practice of the” minority excuse “, according to which the penalty of a minor can not exceed half of a majority.
In fact, it is already possible in case of serious infringement: a minor can be considered and judged as a major from his 16 years, “exceptionally and taking into account the circumstances of the species and of the personality of the minor as well as his situation “.
Also these exceptional situations, the current law allows to apply a severe treatment to all minors over the age of 13: they can be placed in custody, sentenced to fines, and even placed in Detention.
It is only below the age of 13 that the penal regime is radically changing, in accordance with the international texts signed by France, like the Convention of the rights of the child , which requires to set a threshold of criminal irresponsibility. These young minors can not go to jail. In addition, they have benefited from a “presumption of non-discernment” since a reform of September 2021. This allows a minor to be declared irresponsible for his actions, unless the judge has proof that he “understood” and “wished” his act, and that he is able to understand the criminal procedure.