NCJ Number
73305
Journal
Revue de science criminelle et de droit penal compare Issue: 4 Dated: (October-December 1979) Pages: 871-881
Date Published
1979
Length
11 pages
Annotation
The statistical results of a prison records study of Maghrebian inmates who were admitted to the French prison Fleury-Merogis between March 1 and September 8, 1977.
Abstract
For the most part, the 554 inmates were very young; 62.5 percent were below the age of 26 and 30 percent were between 18 and 21 years old. Over 75 percent were born abroad; 22 percent were born in Paris. The great majority lived in Paris or the Paris region, and 76 percent were bachelors. Approximately half of the sample population did not hold a job at the time of imprisonment--a figure considerably above the 44 percent for the entire group of prison admissions (Maghrebian and others) during the period under study. The most common grounds for imprisonment were property offenses. Next to theft, the most common offenses were use of false papers (6.8 percent) and offenses involving the use of violence (10 percent). Few of the violent offenses, however, were of a serious nature: only five murders and one case of manslaughter are listed and sexual offenses make up only 4 percent of the overall offenses. While 87 percent of the sample population had been given full hearing, the rest of the inmates had defaulted at the trial. The length of the sentence was 0 to 3 months in 42.3 of the cases, and between 3 and 6 months for another 28.2 percent. Less than 1 percent received penalties between 3 and 5 years. A comparison of these figures to the sentences imposed on inmates of other prisons and to the sentences of non-Maghrebian inmates indicates that the sentences pronounced in Paris and its surroundings were more severe than for the rest of France and that, furthermore, the Maghrebians received stricter sentences than their French counterparts. The article is supported by statistical charts.