During his interview with France 2 on Wednesday October 26, Emmanuel Macron affirmed that he will not “never an existential link between immigration and insecurity”, while adding this: “When we look at crime in Paris today, we cannot fail to see that at least half of the crime that we observe comes from people who are foreigners either in an irregular situation or awaiting title, at least in very fragile situations.” This declaration caused many elected officials to react. The True from False cell tried to find out what was really going on.
>> REPLAY. Find the second interview of Emmanuel Macron in the political program “L’Evénement”, on France 2
The proportion put forward by Emmanuel Macron is rather true, if we look at the data from the Paris police headquarters, which ended up sending us the figures during the weekend, after several days of waiting.
According to the prefecture, the share of foreigners “in the delinquency committed in Paris amounts to 48% for the first months of the year 2022, all offenses combined. For certain types of offences, continues the prefecture, the proportion of foreign defendants is higher than this average: thus, 70.4% of violent thefts and 75.6% of simple thefts are committed by foreigners in Paris.
If these figures seem to give reason to Emmanuel Macron, they are however to be taken with great precaution according to several specialists in delinquency that franceinfo was able to question.
First, these are partial data for only a few months, the prefecture tells us, without further details on the number of months. A period deemed too short by specialists to draw any real lessons. Another nuance to bring: the figures of the prefecture are raw figures from the police services with several possible biases. For example, a foreigner implicated several times will be counted several times, even though it is the same person.
Clearly, this figure of 48%, alone, without any other indicator, is difficult to put into perspective because it measures part of the facts of delinquency observed, without evaluating the number of delinquents.
If we take the court convictions in 2021, an indicator considered more reliable, we note that of the some 460,000 people who were convicted in France, 16% were foreigners. A rate has been stable for several years.
How can everyone be better informed?
Participate in the consultation initiated as part of the European project De facto on the Make.org platform. Franceinfo is the partner