Newly released statistics from the French Interior Ministry have revealed a massive 20 percent increase in French homicides compared to the period of 2014 to 2015.
The statistics for 2017-2018 reveal the 20 percent increase from 2014-2015, an unexpected increase for the French government which expected the murder rate following the 2015 and 2016 terror attacks in Paris and Nice to return to previous levels, French newspaper Libération reports.
While in the last few months homicides have decreased overall, statistician Cyril Rizk has claimed that there has been a clear rise in murder over the year compared to a general declining trend in the last fifteen years or so. He claimed that the current homicide rate, even when terrorism is excluded, is above the rate in the five years before 2015.
The surge in homicides has largely gone unnoticed in France, with Rizk explaining that “the fight against terrorism has become the number one security issue, relegating everyday security issues to the background.”
Rizk added that there has been a general trend of increased homicides in several western European countries saying, “the decline in the number of homicides was until 2015 a phenomenon of substance that characterized the countries of Western Europe. It can not be ruled out that in a context of mass casualties, the latent level of non-terrorist lethal violence has been influenced.”
“We particularly think of homicides committed by organised crime when settling scores. Their number is also rising sharply according to the figures of the police and the gendarmerie. It almost doubled between September 2015 and September 2018, reaching almost 100 victims in the last twelve months,” he added.
General violence in France has also seen a surge in recent years, particularly random acts of violence — with some estimating there to be at least 777 random acts of violence in the country per day.
These rising levels of disorder, particularly in the heavily migrant-populated suburbs of major French cities, have prompted interventions by several major political figures including former Secretary of State Philippe de Villiers, who said that his brother, General Pierre de Villiers, had warned French President Emmanuel Macron about the problem.
According to De Villiers, his brother told the French president: “If the suburbs give rise to further and even more violent uprisings, we will have no way to face them: we lack the means, we lack the men. This is the reality of the French political situation.”