M. le Ministre just back from his American "charm offensive". Just in time for the fall riot season.

FRENCH INTERIOR MINISTER SAYS YOUTH DELINQUENCY
HAS SOARED 80 PERCENT IN 10 YEARS

PARIS September 13, 2006 (IHT/AP) - Juvenile delinquency in France has risen 80 percent in the past 10 years, Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy said Wednesday, trying to convince lawmakers to back his bill that would strengthen and adapt the law for young offenders.

Sarkozy dismissed a 1945 law governing juvenile delinquency as out of date and said a drugs law was so severe that no one applied it.

... Sarkozy's bill would move cases involving juveniles more quickly through the justice system, rather than let them languish as often happens now, and provide what the minister said was a more suitable response to offenses.

The opening of debate coincided with media accounts of a grisly Sept. 4 attack by three young women on a 14-year-old in a school for troubled youths in the Yvelines region west of Paris. ... Sarkozy made no reference to the case.

... The opposition Socialist Party denounced the bill as a poster to "mask the failure of (Sarkozy's) security policies."

"Sarkozy's laws pass but violence remains," the party said.

Instead of criminal law, the opposition favors magic and pixie dust.

PFFT (What is this?): L'UMP swift justice 2½ | Opposition all-in-good-time justice 4 | Rayonnement français ¾