Migrant minors are reportedly causing havoc in French prisons and juvenile detention centres, and some doubt the migrants are the age they claim to be.
For the last several months, the number of brawls, rebellions, and verbal assaults has increased in several French prisons, including an arson incident at the notorious Fleury-Mérogis prison last month.
According to a report from French newspaper Le Figaro, many are blaming the surge in violence on the influx of foreign minors, who represent a large number of detentions in recent months.
The migrants are mainly from West and North Africa, with Moroccan nationals being especially prevalent.
Mathieu Vasseur, a member of the prison guards union, alleged that “Most of them are not minors but adults and this is the main problem.”
Mr Vasseur added that “eight out of ten foreign minors are in fact, adults. Adults that are often well into their twenties.”
“There’s a real physical difference between a 15-year-old and a 20-year-old. Many end up telling us their age but will never write it down and refuse to submit to bone tests,” he said.
Sébastien Nicolas, national secretary of the Fo-Direction prison directors union, said he was concerned about the migrants’ behaviour towards other inmates, saying some are violent and rape younger inmates.
Last year, the Paris region of Ile-de-France saw at least 6,300 alleged underage migrant arrests in the year to October, with the whole of 2019 seeing 9,134 arrests. Many of the migrants are said to also be addicted to drugs such as benzodiazepine.
Since the height of the migrant crisis in 2015, Europe has taken in at least 210,000 alleged minor migrants. A 2019 report claimed that they cost the French state as much as two billion euros a year.
France is not the only country to see an influx of underage migrant criminals. A September report claimed that in Spain as many as a quarter of those in juvenile detention were migrants from Morocco alone.
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