FRENCH PARENTS could face criminal charges for offences committed by their children under a draft law recommended by President Nicolas Sarkozy.
Parents already have civil responsibility for their children’s actions, but Mr Sarkozy has told parliamentarians from the ruling UMP bloc that he wants to make them criminally responsible for delinquency.
The proposal comes less than a week after the National Assembly approved a controversial plan to suspend certain social welfare payments to parents whose children are repeatedly absent from school.
The feasibility of the latest move has already been greeted with scepticism from legal experts, who have questioned how such a law might be enforced.
“The whole spirit of French penal law rests on the will to act – without the intentional element there cannot be an offence,” lawyer Jean-Yves Liénard told Le Figaro. “Parents being automatically responsible seems implausible . . . One can be an admirable parent and still lose control of one’s child.”
Some deputies have already come out in support of the idea, however. “When a minor throws a brick at a bus, he must have the sense that his responsibility is connected to that of his parents,” said UMP deputy Jérôme Chartier.
In a country where opinion polls regularly show that lack of security is one of voters’ biggest concerns, this is not the first time such an idea has been raised. In 2000, a centre-right politician tabled a proposal to introduce a maximum penalty of two years in prison and a 200,000 franc fine for parents whose children committed an offence. The proposal was later dropped.
Earlier this week, meanwhile, parliament passed a law that makes psychological violence an offence. Introduced as part of a broader range of measures aimed at better protecting victims of domestic violence, the law allows for penalties of up to three years in jail and a €75,000 fine.
“We have introduced an important measure here, which recognises psychological violence, because it isn’t just blows [that hurt] but also words,” Nadine Morano, the minister for family affairs, told parliament.
According to government statistics, 675,000 women have suffered physically violent attacks over the past two years, with 166 women murdered in 2007 and 156 in 2008. Killings arising from domestic violence account for 20 per cent of all murders across the country.