The number of homicides in France has nearly doubled in the last 20 years, with one criminologist stating that the country is undergoing an “epidemic” of murder cases.
In total, France saw an historic 4,472 cases of homicide in 2020, with criminologist Alain Bauer comparing the growing violence to that of the United States.
“While we are rightly moved by the crisis of mass murders and violence that is returning to the United States, a similar movement that is not very visible, but more and more pronounced, is affecting France,” Bauer said, according t0 Le Figaro.
Bauer stated that many expected the number of murders to go down following the terrorist attacks in Paris in 2015 and Nice in 2016, as both saw many casualties. But instead, the number of killings has continued to rise.
According to Le Figaro, the only comparable rise in murders took place from 1972 to 1983 when the rate grew from 2,093 to 3,183, a 52 per cent increase.
Professor Bauer labelled the trend a “very discrete epidemic of homicides” and said the problems stemmed from social crises, health crises, and what he called the “trollisation” of society, including calls for murder on social media networks.
“Behind this daily violence, masked by attacks or mass murders, what is being revealed before our eyes is a global social process of questioning a founding achievement of what makes a civilisation: the right to live,” he said.
Professor Bauer’s comments echo others he made in 2019, when he remarked on the murder rate jumping by 79 per cent from 2009 to 2018, where he stated: “Homicide is, by definition, the criterion for recognising violence in a society.”
Other violent crimes have also seen an increase in recent years such as sexual violence which rose by 12 per cent in 2019, according to a report from the Interior Ministry.
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