The president of the National Rally affirmed this Monday, June 24 in conference, during the presentation of his program, that around a hundred knife attacks are carried out daily in France. A figure whose origin is difficult to trace. Decryption.
An overvalued statistic? The president of the National Rally Jordan Bardella spoke about security during the presentation of his program for the legislative elections this Monday, June 24 in Paris. He notably claimed that 120 knife attacks occur every day in France, without giving a source.
“All the lights are red,” says Jordan Bardella. Dubbing Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin the “minister of insecurity”. He accuses him of having “crossed, one by one, all records of insecurity”, and affirms that “120 knife attacks (take place) per day”.
This is not the first time that Jordan Bardella has used this figure to defend the establishment of security measures. The president of the RN had notably mentioned it during a debate opposing him to the leader of the majority list Valérie Hayer on our antenna on May 2, in the middle of the campaign for the European elections.
A “without consistency” figure
According to our security consultant Guillaume Farde, “this statistic has no substance”. In fact, no recent study currently makes it possible to solely quantify daily knife attacks in France.
The main problem in the figure given by the president of the RN lies on the “semantic level”, according to Guillaume Farde. What is the definition of a “knife attack”? Because it can cover several types of aggression.
For example, this type of attack may refer to a deadly terrorist attack carried out with a knife. In this case, two attacks of this type were recorded in France in 2023, compared to 0 in 2022, according to the figures on insecurity and delinquency recorded by the Ministry of the Interior in 2023.
If we talk about a homicide in general without a terrorist context, 1,010 attacks were recorded in 2023 by this same source. On average, that’s 2.76 homicides per day, a far cry from the 120 daily attacks mentioned by Jordan Bardella, especially since the 1,010 attacks were not all carried out with a knife.
Attempted homicides are not unrecorded
Concerning attempted homicides, they are not listed as such in the database of the police and gendarmerie services and are not counted in the police files.
In fact, to be counted, an attempted homicide must first be qualified as such by the courts during a trial. It is only after a trial that the census of the various homicide attempts could be made and then counted by operating method.
A complex count which is the subject of academic controversies in particular, which the police and gendarmerie services do not do.
Same uncertainty about intentional violence
Concerning cases of assault and voluntary violence, there are 470 cases per day on average, only for offenses outside the family context. But here again, the modes of operation are not listed, so it is impossible to know how many are carried out with a knife.
Furthermore, only 15% of these attacks are solved by the police, according to Guillaume Farde. It would therefore be complex, if not impossible, to count attacks and intentional violence only by bladed weapons.
And if we look at armed robberies, which could include the use of a knife, only 24 incidents are recorded per day on average, once again far from the 120 attacks mentioned by Jordan Bardella.
Contacted by BFMTV on this subject, the National Rally did not respond to our requests.
A figure already mentioned in the public debate
The figure of 120 daily knife attacks had already been put forward by Senator LR Valérie Boyer on several occasions, notably in a question in the Senate on July 7, 2022 and another time in a tweet dated the following July 17, while attacks at knife had made the news.
The Ministry of the Interior, contacted at the time by BFMTV, estimated that the figure mentioned by the senator was probably an “extrapolation” taken from three separate INSEE surveys, the sample questioned not making it possible to quantify in any way reliable the phenomenon.
Security issues are one of the main concerns of the French. According to our latest survey, carried out by the Elabe institute, with La Tribune Dimanche, it is the second concern of the French, behind purchasing power. Before going to vote, this is a theme that counts for 36% of those questioned.
Alexandra Gonzalez, Vincent Vantighem, with Juliette Desmonceaux
