Montpellier Grapples with Rising Crime Among Unaccompanied Foreign Minors

For several months now, the Montpellier police have been arresting one or more homeless and unemployed foreign youths every week. Some are then entrusted to the child protection service.

The Montpellier public prosecutor and his services have looked into this burning and alarming issue. "We cannot talk about unaccompanied minors as a generality. There are about fifty of them and barely 10% of them are taken care of by the child protection services..." says the prosecutor, Fabrice Belargent.

For Mayor Michaël Delafosse, cited by Midi Libre, cooperation between the prosecutor, the Department and the city is necessary to create acceptable living conditions and adequate supervision for these minors. In addition, the prosecutor also deplored the fact of systematically presenting minors to the public prosecutor’s office for violence on public roads, for burglaries, for the most serious acts.

"Many of these minors are under the influence of RivotrilTM, a product that is part of the composition of amphetamines manufactured in Morocco. We realized this on the occasion of the trafficking between Spain and Morocco. There are parallel networks on which we are working and which supply these minors... This has an inhibitory effect with a very violent act," explains the prosecutor.