A nine-year old girl in police court

Since I started this personal blog, I've set up a Google Alert to get the news about this area.

I set up one for my town, but it keeps returning the exact opposite, news about foreign affairs, as I explained in a previous post.

The alerts I receive are based mostly on reports in the main local daily called Le Parisien. It is not the kind of paper I would normally buy, or even read online. It's too full of reports on thefts, accidents and the like, but in the form of alerts, I find that some stories can be quite interesting, or odd, and sometimes they raise societal issues that are not necessarily visible at national level.

Read this:

A nine-year-old girl was summoned before the police tribunal this week. Maybe you wonder why a nine-year-old would be called before a court. So this is the story.

This little girl was going home after school driving a 'quad', under her father's supervision. She was driving on the road, but she was wearing a hard hat, the absence of which could have been the main cause of offense (many youngsters don't like wearing them, but it's the law). Still, she was on the road.

Once or twice, I have seen kids driving these vehicles in my neighborhood, on a Sunday afternoon, and I must say that they are a nuisance. For one thing, I don't believe in giving children this kind of dangerous 'toy', but they certainly shouldn't use them on ordinary roads. It's dangerous enough for adults on bikes, just imagine what would happen if you were directly involved in an accident with this kind of vehicle, and a child on top of that.

The problem is that the procedure should normally have stopped at that: a fine, a reminder of the law (for the father) and a strong warning to never do it again. It would seem a sensible thing to do, more like education than punishment. The courts are too full at the moment (even the police court) and they do not really have the time to deal with this kind of petty offense.

What happened next is unclear. But the story hit the headlines, at least locally.

Is it a deliberate attempt by the police to be more heavy-handed on small offenses? Is it just a slip? Apparently the clerk didn't check the offender's date of birth, and children under 13 cannot be called to court, that again is the law.

My view is that there is a formidable number of more serious driving offenses these days (drunk driving, driving under the influence of drugs, and plain malicious or dangerous acts), that are much more life-threatening for many more people, than this incident. I drive frequently and could report daily on such offenses, most of them by young drivers, but not just them. Wouldn't the police fulfill their role better if they were tackling really dangerous behaviors, than going after a young child?

The whole matter, in my opinion, rests on several new developments in our society and I may sound old-fashioned here, but there it is:

Children are provided with increasingly dangerous toys. A few years ago, there was a little boy roaming the streets of my neighborhood on his own, on a tiny electric motorbike. Crossroads here are extremely dangerous, and he was not necessarily at visible height.

Adults are increasingly taken by technology. Instead of simply 'walking' his daughter from school, the father probably relished in the occasion, or he would have been an extremely weak parent if he simply bowed to his daughter's wish.

More and more liability is imposed on children, when less and less responsibility is required from them. In centuries past, a 'young' person would be mature, i.e. able to take full responsibility of their actions at a younger age than now. In my opinion, this push to incriminate children is hypocritical and robs parents of their responsibilities.

Where is all this going? I don't know. I hope that this procedural slip will generate enough discussions to put the problem in full light. Do we want our children to be dragged to courts for every petty offense?