Paris is increasingly lawless – but the middle-classes don’t seem to care

Ah, Paris, the city of love, the city of light, the city of larceny. Theft, burglary, pickpocketing, assault and homophobic acts are on the up, and even the city’s Procureur, the public prosecutor Rémy Heitz, has admitted the stats ‘aren’t good’.

No, they’re not. Theft, for example, increased by 15 per cent in 2019, up from 124,875 recorded incidents to 144,552. Pickpockets are also enjoying a boom period with an increase of 35 per cent in 12 months, and there were 7 per cent more burglaries last year than in 2018.

True, car theft and gun crime have dropped but physical assaults have risen by 13 per cent, sexual harassment on the transport network has shot up by 30 per cent, and also mounting are crimes characterised as homophobic. One of the most high profile incidents in 2019 was an attack on Nidhal Belarbi, the spokesperson of a Tunisian LGBT campaign group, who had claimed political asylum in France.