France mulls proposals on tougher sentencing for minors

The French Senate is set to examine a controversial legal proposal put forward by former Prime Minister Gabriel Attal, which he claims will tackle youth delinquency.

The bill, which was green-lit during a first reading in the National Assembly, proposes harsher “sanctions” for parents who fail to fulfil their legal responsibilities towards their children, while pushing for tougher trials for repeat underage offenders.

Attal, who served as France’s Prime Minister from January to September 2024, cited the riots that took place across the country in the summer of 2023 as the driving force behind the draft of the legal proposal.

That summer, hundreds of minors, some aged as young as 12 or 13, took to the streets to protest the killing of a 17-year-old teenager named Nahel M by a police officer.

What is in the legal proposal?

While parents in France currently face up to two years in prison and a €30,000 fine for jeopardising “the health, safety, morality or education of their underaged child,” the new law would see sentences raised to three years and fines increased to €45,000.

Judges would also be able to hand parents a community service sentence.

The bill would also bring changes to France’s juvenile criminal justice code by speeding up trials for repeat underage offenders. Instead, rapid hearings for repeat offenders aged over 16 would be instituted.

However, the legal proposal has faced firm criticism.

In November, the French Defender of Rights (Défenseur des Droits) organisation, an independent government administrative authority, issued a warning that the bill could break some of France’s international commitments, in particular the International Convention on the Rights of the Child.

While social media posts helped fuel the 2023 riots in France and incited many teenagers to take part, the French government placed some of the blame on parents who failed to stop their children from participating.

The cost of damage from the riots is estimated to have reached €1 billion, according to a report released by the Senate’s Law Commission in April 2024.

In April 2024, the French Ministry of Justice released figures revealing that 60% of the 1,180 minors who took part in the riots were from single-parent homes.

In response, Éric Dupond-Moretti, the French minister of justice at the time, said parents should be treated with “firmness” but also “humanity”.