In a courtroom in Marseille this month, a young man was handed an eight-month prison sentence, suspended for two years, and an €800 fine. He had been accused of stealing €20.
Just days earlier the man had picked up a roll of 50 cent coins outside a make-up shop that was being looted in the southern French city. There was no suggestion he entered the store, and the company made no damage claims against him. But he was arrested almost immediately.
“I wasn’t thinking of the consequences,” the man, who is of North African descent, said during the trial, which openDemocracy attended.
