“We confuse the seriousness of the facts and the maturity of a minor”, ​​reacts Laurence Bellon, former juvenile judge

“We confuse the seriousness of the facts and the maturity of a minor”, reacts Laurence Bellon, former children’s judge and former president of the Marseille children’s court, on franceinfo, this Friday, April 19, the day after Gabriel Attal’s announcements on violence committed by adolescents. The Prime Minister particularly wants a debate on the “mitigations” has “the minority excuse”, after several news items which marked public opinion.

Laurence Bellon recalls that “the penal code and the juvenile criminal justice code never speak of minority excuses”but “legal mitigation of punishment”. This principle makes it possible in particular to mitigate the sentence of a minor because of their age. “In the expression ‘minority excuse’we have the impression that the minors as such are excused and that we move on to something else, when it is simply a mitigation of the penalty incurred”specifies the magistrate. “It is rare, even for adults, that we impose sentences equal to the maximum penalty provided for”she specifies.

We must not “systematically strengthen repression”

For the former children’s judge, “we cannot say that there is laxity” in the criminal response to violence committed by minors. She recalls that the pre-trial detention of a young person under 16 can last up to one year. For suspects aged 16 to 18, this can go up to two years.

The Grenoble prosecutor, Eric Vaillant, said on Friday April 19 in the columns of The cross, that the minority has become a recruitment argument for drug traffickers. Laurence Bellon agrees with him, but she is not for “systematically strengthen repression”. When she was stationed in Marseille, she and her teams started “to formulate the idea that young people who are used in drug trafficking are victims of human trafficking, that is to say that they are used as slaves precisely because they are minors”. According to her, “we must be able to deal with both the mafia network and the criminal network, and be able to get out the adolescents who are in fact trapped in these networks”.