Adolescence in crisis: a chilling reality
By Nicolas TUDORT
To reassure ourselves, we discreetly call this delinquency, such as the theft of a bicycle. A term less serious than a crime. Yet, in 2024, 57 people under the age of 25 were murdered using a knife or a sharp object.
All these cases and murders will not fade from our memories anytime soon. Last January, a 14-year-old teenager was stabbed to death in Évreux (Eure). The suspected attacker, a 16-year-old boy, was placed in custody. One of the teenagers, suspected of having delivered the fatal stab to Élias, admitted to the facts.
Right in the center of Marseille, Nicolas, 14, received a fatal stab wound to the heart, stabbed by another teenager, for no apparent reason. Khtab, sixteen, will spend 10 years of his life in prison for this crime. In Nantes, a 15-year-old girl was killed in her classroom at the Lycée Notre Dame. Arrested, the suspect was hospitalized in psychiatry.
Inaction in the face of an old problem
Already in 2003, the Sénat pointed out this public policy issue. Since then, what measures have been taken? Clearly none! Adolescence in crisis is a complex phenomenon in both its origins and its manifestations. Faced with the multiple aspects of the problem, public authorities must direct their action towards prevention and management of risk behaviors, which are relatively well identified.
Adolescence, a period of transition and physical and psychological transformations, is the age of vulnerability. Unfortunately, care is far from meeting the needs. In the latest report of the Institut national de la santé et de la recherche médicale on mental disorders, we read: "The prevalence of common mental disorders (including conduct disorders) varies from 5 to 25% and the average of the rates calculated from the results of 49 surveys was estimated at 12.5%."
Thus, one in 8 children suffered from a mental disorder, and one in 5 among adolescents. These are predominantly emotional and behavioral disorders.
A call for responsibility and the law
The idea has spread that everything is now permitted and safe, including absolute and gratuitous horror! People believe that committing the most atrocious crime poses no danger! Obviously, this is false! It is therefore time to get back on the right track, to remind everyone, including children, that there are rules to accept and respect.
For, while the fear of punishment is not enough to eradicate all evil vocations, it paralyzes a great many of them and spares a great many innocent lives.
The ordonnance de 1945 sur l'enfance délinquante (badly named, because these criminals only have the false pretense of their civil status to make them children) has become unsuited to the sad reality of our era. This text must be changed urgently.
Bernard Bertucco Van Damme