International Journal on Criminology Volume 3, Number 1, Spring 2015 | Page 55

International Journal on Criminology
households living in an apartment was estimated at 2.9%, or at a level that did not
vary significantly in the statistical sense of the term. Thus, between the two periods
compared, the difference in rate almost doubled between households occupying a
house and those in an apartment: it went from less than 0.4 points during the first
four Cadre de vie et sécurité surveys to almost 0.7 points during the 2011 to 2013
surveys (Perron-Bailly 2013, 3).
Moreover, the proportion of attempted burglaries, and therefore failures, is greater for
apartments:
The proportion of attempted thefts with forced entry is higher for households living
in an apartment (55.8%) than for those in a house (45.5%) (Perron-Bailly 2013, 3).
Thus, a rise in thefts with forced entry concerning solely houses may be the result of a
choice by thieves to target more vulnerable residences.
Moreover, given the number of reported cases recorded by the police and gendarmes
between 2008 and 2013, the increase was even greater outside the major cities, in areas under
the jurisdiction of the Gendarmerie Nationale:
In 2008, the gendarmes recorded a little more than 53,000 cambriolages de locaux
d’habitations principales. This number has since risen by more than 34,000 reported
cases, or +63.9% in five years. In areas of police jurisdiction, the number of reported
cases of cambriolages de locaux d’habitations principales has also risen each year
since 2008 … . It therefore passed from less than 98,500 in 2008 to more than
142,000 in 2013, or 44.4% (Bulletin annuel, ONDRP 2014).
There is descriptive information on the rise in home thefts with forced entry in
metropolitan France and Belgium that supports the interpretations based on the theory of
opportunities and the theory of routine activities.
Yet how then does the upturn starting in 2008/2009 fit with the “security hypothesis”
that explains the crime drop of the 2000s in terms of domestic burglaries with forced entry?
Why, after a period of very steep drops in the rate of domestic burglary with forced
entry recorded by the police per inhabitant, did improvements in the level of home-security
equipment that were supposed to be at its origin no longer seems to have their presumed
effect?
The emergence of a new type of perpetrators can resolve this apparent paradox. A
“responsive securitization” that could have taken place during the 2000s would have been an
answer to the burglars methods at the time. Facing a known risk, an effective response could
have been found. If methods of operation change, prior measures might lose their preventive
value.
This scenario is not the only possible hypothesis, but it has the advantage of being
compatible with the interpretations of the increase mentioned above: the context may
have changed after 2008 through the effect of the rise in the price of gold and the arrival of
perpetrators from Eastern Europe into France and Belgium in the framework of criminal
networks.
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