A year after the death of Lilibelle, 14, in a fight in Saint-Chéron (Essonne) a tribute day is organized in Dourdan this Saturday, February 26. The teenager was stabbed in the stomach during a brawl on February 22, 2021. The next day another young man, Toumani, died in another brawl in Boissy-Saint-Antoine. A few months later, the department was once again bereaved, with the death of Arthur, killed in a brawl in Sainte-Geneviève-des-Bois. A year after this black series, the Essonne departmental council takes stock of its anti-brawl plan and denounces a glaring lack of resources.
A fight against brawls plan
Last year, the prefecture of Essonne recorded 73 incidents of brawls, compared to 91 in 2020 and 56 in 2019. To put an end to this delinquency and this violence, in 2021 the department had launched a plan of fight. It had thus reinforced the security of sensitive schools by focusing on video protection “to better identify and understand the phenomena of fights“, according to the president of the departmental council François Durovray.
Alert systems have also been created between law enforcement, elected officials and public carriers through instant messaging. On Whatsapp, the various mayors of the department can thus inform themselves in real time: “It is very important that the mayor of municipality X knows that something is happening at his neighbor’s house to be able to alert his youth services, his municipal police“, according to the chairman of the department.
François Durovray also highlights the work done by street educators: “Today there are 138 specialized educators deployed throughout the territory“, he details. The president of the departmental council says “reflect, at department level, on the deployment of mediation, particularly in colleges“.
Prevention focused on the educational component
If some fights between teenagers can arise from insults, misunderstandings or provocations on social networks, there are also historical rivalries in Essonne which oppose bands from neighboring towns: as between Évry-Courcouronnes and Ris-Orangis, Longujumeau and Chilly -Mazarin or between Sainte-Geneviève-des-Bois and Saint-Michel-sur-Orge.
In Saint-Michel-sur-Orge, the municipality has deployed a set of educational measures to fight against the isolation of students in the process of exclusion and to prevent school dropout. “_We have an “alternative parenthesis” device which is the care of students identified by National Education as being on the verge of exclusion, or exclu_s”, underlines the mayor, Sophie Rigault. For a week, the students are thus taken care of by specialized workers “to rework on self-esteem, respect for the rules of the community“.
The city councilor explains that he also created a “week of respect and benevolence, with theater workshops and role plays to learn and understand the attitude to adopt depending on the situation“. Because if some of the young people involved in the brawls are in a situation of delinquency, most are suffering, in social and personal difficulties.
– Laurine Benjebria
Special educators on the front line
Among the main players in this prevention, specialized prevention educators and social mediators try to defuse conflicts and raise awareness of violence. Through in-depth work, the employees of the CEPFI association (Centre for Prevention, Training and Integration) seek, for example, to create a relationship of trust and re-establish a link between young people and the institutions. The coronavirus epidemic has contributed to the disappearance of these links: “There are no longer many people on the ground to meet families and young people in the neighborhoods and with the health crisis, entire public services have been closed.“, regrets Michèle Franck, the director of the center.
The 13 street educators of the CEPFI work on a wider territory, in Saint-Michel-sur-Orge, Brétigny-sur-Orge, Fleury-Mérogis, Morsang-sur-Orge and Sainte-Geneviève-des-Bois. “Educators must anchor themselves in their territory, because a relationship is won over time“, explains Claude, head of department. Anne is one of these educators. For 15 years, she has been traveling through the neighborhoods to meet young people aged 11 to 25. She discusses various issues with them: “It can also be about school difficulties, job-related difficulties, relationship difficulties“, she notes. She answers their questions, directs them to the various city departments involved, “always with the idea of creating a relationship of trust that allows young people to verbalize requests and move towards individual support“.
Once this relationship of trust has been established, young people can ask Anne for lighter questions, particularly around leisure. The educator saw teenagers asking her if they could attend a PSG match. “We tell them that what they ask of us is expensive, so in return we will ask you to invest in other projects“, she underlines. This involves, for example, volunteering in order to make these teenagers “actors of what they want to put in place and make them accountable“. Several “projects” have been carried out by the young people involved with the CEPFI in recent years: “We have renovated all the benches in the town of Saint-Michel-sur-Orge and renovated a local Secours populaire de Morsang-sur-Orge“, recalls Claude.
The association also tries to restore self-confidence to young people. “They put up their own barriers, and don’t dare to project themselves outside their daily lives and our job is to open them up to something else, outside the neighborhood.“, explains Anne. To show them that there are several opportunities outside their neighborhood, the CEPFI organizes educational stays ten times a year for a small group of 4 young people in Burgundy, Normandy or Brittany. allows you to discover different territories, other activities such as sailing. “It’s a great action: we go outside the neighborhood, far from the codes of the neighborhood, their concerns to spend time with them where we are really on the daily“, greets Anne.
Mobilization of all stakeholders
The town hall of Saint-Michel-sur-Orge salutes the work of the various associations deployed on its territory. Sophie Rigault wants to go even further and welcomes the obtaining, a few weeks ago, of the “Educational City” label. “It is also the financial possibility to go further in the educational field.“explains the mayor. She would thus like “develop inter-city collaborations and imagine stays, joint activities” between the children of the different municipalities. The objective of such activities would be to allow the children “to realize that it is not because they live in two different municipalities that their problems, their experience are different. By doing it as soon as possible, we make them understand that there is no reason to be in violence“, adds the mayor of Saint-Michel-sur-Orge.
To allow young people to be in contact with other people from neighboring territories, the CEPFI has devised other mechanisms, such as “leave with young people who are involved in fights with an educator from another city“.”It’s an experience we conducted this summer and it was extremely rewarding.“, greets the director of the association, Michèle Franck.
A glaring lack of resources
If François Durovray welcomes the actions deployed locally and the work carried out by specialized educators, he cannot help but warn of their lack of resources. And this concerns many other sectors in the department. “We do not benefit from the same public services of the State as the rest of the country, we have fewer teachers, fewer magistrates and clerks, fewer police officers per inhabitant“, warns the president of the county council.
Nothing justifies this situation
To obtain more resources, the president of the department had already asked the Prime Minister last year to create an Essonne Plan. A year later, François Durovray said he noticed “that the bleeding has been stopped, that there are no more departures or that when there are they are replaced, but there is no catch-up yet, as promised“.”To the multifactorial phenomenon of brawls, the response must be multiple (safe, educational, pedagogical) but, above all, it supposes means“, he added in a press release.
In addition to budgetary problems, specialized educators have faced another increasingly glaring difficulty in recent years: the difficulty of recruitment. “Finding people in social action, especially in specialized prevention is difficult, what’s more people motivated for this work which requires a lot of oneself.“, alarmed Claude, of the CEPFI.