The death of Thomas, which occurred in Crépol on November 17, stunned France. How can you die from stabbing at a simple village ball? How can young people who come from a neighboring suburb to “plant white people” indulge in such extreme and gratuitous violence? Child psychiatrist Maurice Berger has been asking these questions for years. In 1979, he created in Saint-Étienne the only French hospital service dedicated to these children, an increasing number of whom are falling into extreme violence. Familiar with Quebec, where youth protection laws served as his inspiration, he speaks every day with young people who have been taken from their families due to gratuitous violence. This is why what happened in Crépol did not really surprise him.
“Crépol was predictable. The group that attacked consisted of subjects with defective identities who shared no common values. They needed enemies to feel united, which gave them a badge of identity. What is new is that such a group leaves its territory to attack peaceful people. We are no longer in the lost territories of the Republic because conquered by Islamism, but in the conquest of territories by force. This insecurity now extends throughout the country. As for anti-white racism, it was known. Many educators no longer want to work in certain structures because they are treated like dirty white people and no longer have any authority. »
The nature of violence has changed
The rise in violence in France is no secret. In 2018, every two minutes, if we exclude thefts, there was gratuitous violence. A constantly increasing figure. Between 2018 and 2020, attempted homicides increased from 2,400 to 3,600, explains the doctor. Fortunately, advances in resuscitation and surgery have made it possible to limit mortality.
According to Maurice Berger, this violence has changed in nature. “We went from “hitting is serious”, to “hitting is not serious”, then to “killing is not serious”. “In any case, he would have died one day or another,” miners tell us. So killing would only consist of accelerating a natural process. These young people feel no guilt, which destabilizes professionals. The frequent judicial laxity in France aggravates the situation. “I know that even if what I do is serious, I will not go to prison,” these minors tell me. »
Even if France prohibits ethnic statistics, all surveys tend to show that this extreme violence is particularly strong in immigrant neighborhoods. Foreigners are three times more represented in French prisons. They constitute 23% of the prison population compared to only 7% of the population. In Lyon, 44% of delinquency and crime observed is the work of foreigners. 75% of minors referred to the Paris Court are today unaccompanied minors. France is not an exception. In Italy, Switzerland, Denmark and Germany, where ethnic statistics are authorized, populations from non-European immigration are everywhere over-represented in crime.
“In the judicial educational center where I worked, 90% of minors came from the Maghreb,” says Dr.r Shepherd. But 80% of the educators were also North African and respected the laws, even though they came from the same neighborhoods and had lived in the same economic conditions. This shows that precariousness is not the causal element of violence, and that we are born into a family before being born into a neighborhood. »
For the internationally renowned child psychiatrist, poverty in no way explains this gratuitous violence. According to studies, the first characteristic of violent minors is that they were exposed to domestic violence very early, often before the age of two. “At least 70% of violent minors have witnessed this violence and internalize it very early, so much so that it becomes constitutive of their identity, and can resurface immediately for a simple “bad look”. The young person then becomes a destructive tsunami. Any culture that contains gender inequality can be the source of such violence. This violence also exists in the countries of origin, but it is expressed less there, because the police repression is brutal and the shame then falls on the author’s family. »
Clan families
In his work On gratuitous violence in France (L’Artilleur), Maurice Berger says that half of the young North Africans in his center have a life plan once married to live close to their mother… or even at her house! These young people cannot imagine themselves outside the clan, without whom they are nothing.
“In our culture, our project is to have autonomous children who can build a personal project and move away without breaking relationships. On the contrary, the members of the clan have an undifferentiated group identity. In the event of disagreement with others, a member of a clan rallies his group: “my brothers will come and kill you”. The clan’s code of honor takes precedence over the laws of the Republic. »
A clan cannot have its honor sullied or admit a mistake. It would humiliate the whole family. He systematically exonerates his children. “A clan is a body and if a member moves away from it physically or psychologically, he experiences himself as an amputee,” says Berger. This is why ghettoization is self-secreted. » Here we are faced with a head-on opposition between two types of cultures well described by the anthropologist Margaret Mead: the cultures of shame (or honor) and those of guilt characteristic of Judeo-Christian civilization.
Because this is where the trap closes. Indeed, nothing is easier than to make a Westerner feel guilty. “And the more the members of the civilization of guilt feel guilty,” writes Maurice Berger, “the more the members of the society of shame describe themselves as victims, in an endless inflation. » This is why, he adds, “defining so-called “sensitive” neighborhoods as “dispossessed” is to fuel this victimized position of permanent demand”.
Short, quick sentences
It is not because the child psychiatrist understands the origin of these behaviors that he excuses them. On the contrary, he notes that for more and more violent minors, educational measures, placement in a home, and suspended sentences contribute to lessening the seriousness of the act committed.
Many French judges have a criminal ideology and the government has an anti-criminal ideology
“In the absence of a feeling of guilt,” says Berger, “the only reflection of the seriousness of the attack is the heaviness of the sanction: “we take a high price”. It is also the only device that stops an all-powerful operation of the “I want, I do” type; prison marks a radical break from this mode of operation. The question is when to call on it. Many French judges have a criminal ideology and the government has an anti-criminal ideology. He still thinks, without proof, that prison is the school of crime, while the non-recidivism rate after one year is 69%. The result is that you have to be a multi, multi, multi-recidivist to go to prison, when violence has become an established way of life, to paraphrase Quebec criminologist Maurice Cusson. »
For Berger, the law must therefore be firm from the first significant violence and application, rapid. “These short sentences must also be accompanied by a heavy suspended sentence which plays the role of a sword of Damocles,” he said. Like the Netherlands, where prison sentences are generally short, but automatic. As a result, the country has closed more than 27 prisons, which it rents to Belgium and Norway…