International Journal on Criminology Volume 7, Number 2, Spring 2020 | Page 13
International Journal on Criminology
In order to get closer to the truth (the homicides taken into account by
the police are not the same as those recorded by other services such as Health or
Justice), we considered that the error variable was stable over the period, as the
Ministry of the Interior's measurement tool had not been structurally modified
(it should be noted, however, that attempted homicides are only clearly identified
from 1987 onwards).
Moreover, since 2015, following a report by the National Observatory of
Delinquency and Penal Responses (ONDRP) on the double counting of certain
homicides, the Ministerial Statistical Service of Internal Security (SSMSI) has been
making corrections that make the tool more unstable than usual, even though this
is often for a technically justified cause.
Thus, from 1994 to 2014, the National Observatory of Delinquency and
Penal Responses (ONDRP) had described a phenomenon of continuous decline in
the homicide rate, the main component of a Western movement called crime drop
in Anglo-Saxon countries.
In an article published in December 2015, it was reported that between 1994
and 2014, the homicide rate had fallen by almost 60% in metropolitan France.
In November 2018, in the newspaper Libération, Cédric Mathiot, a journalist
who pioneered fact checking in France, looked into the subject, following
a question asked via the Checknews website by Cyril Rizk, former head of the
ONDRP. In the article entitled "Homicides: Beauvau is afraid of his number" we
learned that if we confine ourselves to "only homicides (excluding intentional assault
and battery followed by death, which the interior ministry counts) in metropolitan
France" their 12-month level was "clearly on the rise, breaking the trend of
decline and then stagnation observed for nearly 15 years." Cyril Rizk then offered
an explanation: the attacks "have changed the nature of homicidal violence committed
in France. They have also changed the way the issue of violence is addressed
in public debate. The fight against terrorism has become the number one security
issue, relegating everyday security problems to the background. Monthly figures
from the police and gendarmerie now suggest that something may have slipped
through the cracks.
In other words, no one would have seen anything. The interior ministry
had been contacted several times but had not replied, first questioning the figures
provided and then saying that it wanted to "get to the bottom of this" before commenting
on them.
However, according to provisional official data published on 7 January 2020,
there has been an 8.5% increase over one year in metropolitan France, i.e. 76 more
victims between 2018 (894) and 2019 (970). However, the provisional data should
still be treated with caution. The provisional figure for 2017 had been revised from
896 to 825, while the 2018 figure had been revised from 894 to 845. The final fig-
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