A ministerial visit full of announcements. The Minister of the Interior and Overseas Gérald Darmanin, visiting Mayotte, announced that he was going to make proposals to open “places of re-education and recovery” for juvenile offenders, supervised by soldiers.
“The President of the Republic in his campaign has proposed something that has not been discussed much: places supervised by soldiers, which are places of re-education, recovery of some children, very young adolescents, who have no parents, or very few. We saw it a little in Reunion, we see it a lot here in Mayotte, “said the minister to the press after the visit to the hospital center of this island in the Indian Ocean.
“A place of sanction and education”
He announced that he would make proposals to this effect to the President of the Republic “as of next week”. The Minister indicated that the police and gendarmes, decorated earlier in the day, had mentioned “as an aside minors of 11 years old, 10 years old, nine years old who had machetes, axes, who attacked the police and the constables”.
“Today the magistrates, and this is quite normal, release them, since we do not put children in prison, but we must nevertheless offer them a place of punishment and education”, explained the minister. For his part, the Keeper of the Seals announced Thursday the opening by 2024 of a closed educational center (CEF) in Mayotte, but these places are intended for young people aged 13 and over.
Moreover, faced with the Mahorais for whom insecurity is a major daily fear, the minister also asked the director general of the national police “to study the possibility of using intermediate weapons, which we have used here when there were riots, when the Raid came,” during scuffles involving miners. He recalled that “obviously, when you don’t apprehend minors, even extremely violent ones, (there is) no possibility of shooting live ammunition as you would when you are attacked by adults”.