French authorities have set about cracking down on “ultra-violent” youth after a series of teen crimes. But researchers say that youth violence is not necessarily on the rise and that rather, politicians are overemphasising it as an election ploy.
Since the start of the year, French media have been reporting on violent crimes involving teens including, most recently, the stabbing death of a 15-year-old in Chateauroux.
This came after another 15-year-old was beaten to death last month by young people outside his Viry-Châtillon school, days after a 14-year-old girl was left unconscious after being attacked outside her school in Montpellier.
The crimes led Prime Minister Gabriel Attal to announce a “public consultation” on youth violence in France.
But despite these heavily publicised events, actual statistics do not back claims that youth violence is on the rise.
"The trend over more than 20 years is overall stability," sociologist Laurent Mucchielli told RFI, adding that the current focus on young people can be boiled down to political rhetoric.
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Although police statistics show younger people as overrepresented in violent crimes, numbers have dropped by a third since 1993.
For Mucchielli, who has long studied youth delinquency in France, a media focus on such crimes gives the impression of an increase.
"There has not been a single year when I haven't heard this theme in the mouth of politicians in the media," he said, attributing the current uptick to upcoming European parliamentary elections.
"Youth violence is a classic topic of French public debate. It constitutes a resource for political power. The general messages are always the same," he continued, saying these include declining teacher authority and a lax justice system.
"I have been hearing this for 27 years."
'Ultra-violence'?
Last summer, French President Emmanuel Macron decried what he said were “very young” people in the riots following the police killing of a teenager at a traffic stop.
Macron requested the public consultation on youth violence last month to put an end to what he called a “surge of ultra-violence”.
When introducing the consultation, Attal announced new measures aimed at middle-school students, including sending troublemakers to military-style boarding schools for a few weeks.
Immigration links
The consultation came as the far right had been calling for more crackdowns on youth violence and linking it with immigration – a key issue for its supporters.
And though the political focus is on young people in general, Mucchielli argues it is young people with immigrant backgrounds actually being referred to.
“Since the end of the '80s, this term of ‘youth violence’ has been really linked to the term of drugs, to that of riots, and to that of what we call now, religious radicalisation, which obviously concerns Islam in France.”
Gang influence
While statistics do not show an increase in violence committed by young people, there is growing influence and power of gangs running criminal activities which attract young people from lower socioeconomic areas around the country.
Mucchielli says getting involved is a "way of life" for these youth, adding that addressing the problem involves more than sending kids to boarding schools or imposing school uniforms.
Many young people involved in gangs are growing up in unstable homes, and have poor school performance and few opportunities in their often disadvantaged neighbourhoods.
“Therefore if a politician really wants to change the situation, they have to work on those social and generational determinants, which are very heavy,” he said.
For more on this story, listen to the Spotlight on France podcast, episode 110.
