The perpetrators of petty theft and sexual offenses on public transport in the Paris region are foreign nationals, data from the Ministry of Interior’s statistical service (SSMSI) shows . According to the ministry’s data, in 2019, 93 percent of those charged with non-violent theft on the public transport system of Île-de-France, the central French region including Paris with over 12 million inhabitants, were born outside France. Additionally, 63 percent of the perpetrators of sexual assault were foreigners. For those perpetrators who were born in France, the Interior Ministry does not break down their ethnic background. As a result, it is unclear how many of these suspects are French or other ethnic groups. SSMSI Perpetrators of crimes on public transport in the Île-de-France region At the same time, the Interior Ministry does break down the region of the world that foreign suspects are from. This data showed that the biggest single group of those charged with petty theft were born in the Maghreb region, the part of North Africa stretching from the Mediterranean to the Sahara.
In contrast, those accused with violent theft (i.e. robbery) were mostly French-born (65 percent) but it is unclear what their ethnicity is. SSMSI Victims of crimes on public transport in the Île-de-France region On the side of victims, those who were subject to petty theft in the same region were mostly French (64 percent), while 87 percent of those suffering sexual attacks were also French. According to the latest 2013 census, the population of Île-de-France region had 2.2 million immigrants, twice as high a ratio as in the rest of metropolitan France. Most of them were concentrated in Paris itself and the Seine-Saint-Denis department, the latter having almost twice as many robberies, drug offenses and murders than the rest of France. In October of this year, a French woman uploaded a video of her being sexually molested by a foreign male on France’s rail system. Facebook responded by censoring the disturbing video . The French National Railway Company (SNCF) responded to the woman’s post on Twitter and apologized for the incident. Conservatives have pointed to the high rates of criminality of foreigners, especially young migrants. French philosopher and journalist Eric Zemmour said that even though the country is aware who is committing assaults and violent crimes, the media refuses to report on it. During Zemmour’s television appearance, he referenced a number of high-profile murders and attacks in the last year that have been committed by the country’s foreign population.
