Newly published French crime statistics for 2024 show a consistent rise in delinquency, highlighting the ongoing failure of government policy, despite the bold statements and announcements. Though the authorities are reluctant to admit it, judicial leniency and lax immigration policies are clearly working in tandem.
The findings of the Ministry of the Interior are indisputable: every day in France, an average of three murders or assassinations, 600 burglaries, more than 330 robberies with firearms, nearly 700 thefts from vehicles, and more than 1,110 frauds of all kinds are committed.
Analysts such as Marc Vanguard link the increase in violence to massive, uncontrolled immigration. The rate of involvement of African foreigners in violent crimes and offences is more than three times higher than that of the French, Vanguard’s research reveals.
Yet the Left and the mainstream media persist in denying the link between crime and immigration. They keep repeating the axiom that the observed coincidence between two phenomena does not establish a causal link between them.
A symbolic milestone has been reached: more than a thousand violent deaths occur every year in France—a telling indicator of the extreme deterioration in the country’s security climate, following an almost continuous trend recorded since 2016, as pointed out by criminologist Alain Bauer.
A high point was reached at the turn of the 1990s-2000s, with more than 1,400 homicides, before a downturn was observed. There were 1,186 homicides in 2024, slightly fewer than then, but this figure comes after almost a decade of continuous rise.
Bauer’s findings are uncompromising. French society is increasingly violent and dominated by a “death instinct.”
Other indicators are also alarming, such as the rise in sexual violence. There may have been a ‘#metoo’ effect, with victims speaking out and police paying more attention to these offences. However, this should not mask the real increase in such violence. According to a police union speaking to Le Figaro, this rise can partly be explained by a “relaxation of behaviour on some parts of the population.”
Alain Bauer sees in these developments “a profound movement towards the return of physical violence in the West.” He believes that the omnipresence of violence is, above all, the symptom of a society in deep crisis: “loss of confidence in institutions and intermediary bodies, social crisis and widespread resignation”; health crisis; an explosion of violence on social media. Symbolically powerful and highly specific events, such as terrorist attacks, which obviously inflate the statistics, must not blind us to the fact that no demographic is now immune to the ever-expanding violence of everyday life.
Without a clear and honest discussion of the causes, the legal measures needed to effectively reduce crime in France are likely to take time to materialize.
