Figures from a government report have shown that foreign nationals were responsible for 92% of thefts and nearly two-thirds of all sexual assaults carried out on the Paris regional public transportation system in 2020.
The figures, published in an annual report released last week by France’s interior ministry, revealed the non-French nationals–despite composing 18.5% of the population in the Ille-de-France region–accounted for 92% and 62%, respectively, of those accused of committing theft or sexual assault on public transportation in the region.
The report details the demographic profiles of victims and perpetrators of various criminal offenses carried out on public transportation systems in the Ille-de-France region—the region immediately surrounding Paris—as well as in other parts of the country.
With regard to instances of sexual violence on public transportation in the Ille-de-France region, non-French nationals accounted for 62%, with those from sub-Sahara Africa composing 23% of all foreigners accused of the offense.
Additionally, while French citizens composed 20% of those accused of committing violent robbery on public transportation in the Ille-de-France region, non-French nationals made up 80%, and of that number, 61% came from North Africa. As for thefts without violence, like pickpocketing, non-French nationals represented 92% of the accused criminals, with North Africans once again registering as the largest group represented, at 59%.
With respect to the demographic profiles of the victims, French citizens were the victims in 64% of the cases of non-violent thefts, 68% of the instances of violent robbery, 79% of the assault and batteries, and 87% of the sexual assaults.
The alarming findings elucidated in the report are by no means unique to France, as similar trends have been observed in other European countries.
In October, a study commissioned and carried out by the Finnish government revealed the foreign-born residents were vastly overrepresented in cases of rape and child sex crime last year. Despite comprising less than 7% of Finland’s total population, individuals from this cohort were found to have accounted for nearly 38% of the country’s rape suspects in 2020.
The Finnish study’s findings mirrored data extracted in a separate study—published weeks earlier by the Swedish government—which showed that first-generation immigrants were nearly three times as likely to be rape suspects than were native-born Swedes with Swedish parents.
