Comparative Juvenile Criminal Law - Sanctions Incurred By Minors

Sanctions Incurred By Minors

The order of February 2, 1945 relative to the childhood delinquency contains the measures provided for the minor offender. French system has three punishment measures:

• First one, the educational measure. It can be an admonition, a particular educational placing, under legal protection placing (five years maximum) or a supervised freedom.
• The mediation-retrieval measure. Minor is involved in the reparation of the damage he caused. This measure needs the victim’s approval. If the minor is between 16 and 18 years old, he can be submitted to a general interest working.
• The last one, the imprisonment measure. Minor imprisonment penalty can’t exceed the half of an adult imprisonment penalty. However, oldest minor (over 16) can have the same penalty if the offence is serious.

Punishment depends of minor’s age. As aforesaid, if he is under 7 or 8, he can’t have any punishment. If he is between 8 and 13, the sentence will be nothing more than an educational punishment. If he is over 13, he can have an educational and a criminal punishment, but the tribunal has to explain its decision according to the minor personality and offence circumstances.

The U.S. punishment system isn’t as compartmentalized as the French one. Penalty is equal for each juvenile offender over 10, and there’s no stage differentiation between measures. Measures are quite the same as French ones:

• Place the delinquent in the care of institution to take care of him
• Place the delinquent in an alternative incarceration program
• Order the delinquent to participate in a treatment program
• Order the child to work in public buildings or private property
• Order the child to take part to the reparation of the damage he caused
• Commit the delinquent to the Department of Children and Families, if the child family is not adequate.

Since 1988, the death penalty for children who committed crimes has been outlawed. And of March 2005, the death penalty was abolished for killers who committed their crimes before the age of 18. There were 72 peoples in death row concerned by this court ruling.

As we can see, American and French systems don’t protect juvenile in the same way. But this protection is effective. There are also a lot of efforts put on the prevention of delinquency. Unfortunately, juvenile’s laws are getting harder and harder to face delinquency. For example, in France, the two main candidates (N. Sarkozy and S. Royal) have project to strengthen juvenile criminal law.