Young offenders should be sent off to an army boot camp as an alternative to prison, Socialist ex-presidential candidate Ségolène Royal has proposed.
Ms Royal, president of Poitou-Charentes, has asked the defence ministry to agree to an experiment that will see young delinquents train with an army regiment in La Rochelle to develop their civic responsibility.
She said military training was preferable, because “prison transforms people into worse delinquents”.
The training would include sport, general handiwork and community service tasks such as cleaning forests and rivers.
The idea has the support of La Rochelle’s mayor, Maxime Bono, who sees it as a way of safeguarding the future of the town’s army
regiment.
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