A man in the French city of Loire has been sent to prison by a judge after he repeatedly violated lockdown measures meant to halt the spread of the Chinese coronavirus.
The 35-year-old was on parole at the time of his arrest and according to prosecutors had 16 prior convictions for a number of offences including drug use, contempt of court, theft, and travelling on public transport without a ticket.
The man was placed in the La Talaudière detention centre after a criminal court found him guilty of “endangering the lives of others”, Le Parisien reports.
The man is not the first person in the area to be handed down a prison term for violating the nationwide lockdown measures put in place by President Emmanuel Macron.
A 19-year-old, who had violated the measures ten times in only a few days, was also handed down a four-month prison sentence — although in his case it was suspended.
Penalties for breaking the lockdown rules vary from €135 for the first violation, to €1,500 for another violation within a 15-day period, to up to €3,700 in fines and six months in prison for those who break the law more than four times in a single month.
The cases are not the first in France to reveal how some residents are not obeying the lockdown rules or taking them seriously.
Police in the no-go Paris suburbs of Seine-Saint-Denis say they are overwhelmed trying to enforce the lockdown measures and have issued a record number of fines already.
“We are not going to give up. But we also know where these people live and how they live. Strict containment, for them, is just impossible,” a police officer working in the area said.
Residents of other countries have also ignored lockdown measures, with some young people in Germany going as far as holding “corona parties”.
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