Ever since Emmanuel Macron called snap elections to the National Assembly last summer, it’s been common to hear gripes about paralysis overtaking French political life. Yet there are revealing exceptions to the purported stasis, most notably in the country’s crackdown on crime.
Among the rare reforms that have made it through parliament over the last year are a pair of laws designed to strengthen state powers against the illegal drug trade and “delinquent” minors. Taken together, the legislation marks a significant tightening of the criminal code, making it easier to deny certain drug offenders a jury trial, for example, and increasing parental liability for a child’s illegal behavior.
Justice minister Gérald Darmanin wants to go even further. Fresh off this spring’s legislative victories, in late July he announced a new push for this fall, aimed at doing away with suspended jail time in cases of recidivism and reviving automatic prison sentences. Calling for a new category of short, under-one-month jail stints, Darmanin argued for “send[ing] a bit more people to prison for shorter periods of time.” The underlying logic, it seems, is that more punishment equals more security.
To its advocates, the anti-crime drive is about responding to the deep anxieties of the French public. In an IPSOS survey released in June, upward of 40 percent of those polled listed “criminality and violence” as their chief concern. Thanks to the stream of macabre stories that intermittently preoccupy the news cycle, whether over stabbings between rival gangs of high schoolers or the violence of the drug trade in certain cities including Marseille, the average French person could well think that their country is about to drown in crime.
The…
Auteur: Harrison Stetler
