The police provide data broken down by racism and xenophobia (which also includes anti-religious hate crime) and bias on grounds of sex/gender (also including hate crimes committed with bias based on sexual orientation and gender identity).
The anti-Christian, anti-Semitic and anti-Muslim hate crimes presented below have been disaggregated separately by the Ministry of the Interior. Furthermore, anti-Semitic and anti-Muslim hate crimes have been consulted with civil society organizations that monitor such crimes.
In 2020, the prosecution continued to implement the good practices as envisaged in the order on combatting discrimination, hate speech, and hate crimes issued on 4 April 2019. A specialist prosecutor is appointed within each prosecutorial office to ensure effective communication with the investigating services, and external partners, and to facilitate the forging relations among various counterparts.
Law no. 2020-766 of 24 June 2020 on combatting hateful content on the Internet, some provisions of which were later declared unconstitutional by the Constitutional Council (namely due to their impinging upon the freedom of expression), addresses, among other things, sexual harassment motivated by bias. It anticipates the creation of a special jurisdiction deal for such offences as well as the possibility of filing a motion to this court online. A decree issued by the Minister of Justice on 24 November 2020 designated the Tribunal Judiciaire de Paris to undertake this particular role.
In August 2020, a Lyon region deputy received two anonymous letters containing racist insults and death threats. After a thorough investigation, the police identified the perpetrator who later admitted writing a number of similar letters sent to the President of the Republic, a lawyer from Lyon specializing in migration law, and a local NGO. The perpetrator was found guilty of, among other things, the offence of issuing death threats with a racist motive, and received a sentence of 12 months imprisonment, suspended on probation.
The records under this category include both cases of bias based on sexual orientation and gender identity. Due to statistical confidentiality, the number of homicides and homicide attempts could not be provided.
Incidents in this category have also been reported under the category "Racism and Xenophobia" and may therefore be listed here twice.
Incidents in this category have also been reported under the category "Racism and Xenophobia" and may therefore be listed here twice
Incidents in this category have also been reported under the category "Racism and Xenophobia" and may therefore be listed here twice.
The data provided for racism and xenophobia also relate to crimes committed based on an actual or perceived membership in a religion. Incidents listed separately as anti-Semitic, anti-Muslim, and anti-Christian are therefore also included in this set of data.
ODIHR recognizes France's efforts in the area of hate crime specialization in prosecution. However, based on the available information, it observes that since 2016, France has not reported data on hate crimes recorded by the prosecution and judiciary to ODIHR. In addition, ODIHR observes that France would benefit from raising the awareness and building the capacity of criminal justice officials about hate crimes.
ODIHR recalls that in the Ministerial Council Decision 9/09, participating States have committed to collecting reliable data and statistics in sufficient detail on hate crimes and to reporting such crimes periodically to ODIHR. In the Ministerial Council Decision 9/09, participating States have also committed to introducing or further developing professional training and capacity-building activities for law-enforcement, prosecution, and judicial officials dealing with hate crimes. ODIHR stands ready to support France in meeting its relevant commitments through the provision of comprehensive resources and tailored assistance in the area of hate crime recording and data collection, as well as providing further resources and tailored capacity building assistance for police, prosecution, and judiciary.
In addition to incidents summarized below, this graph includes the following numbers of hate incidents reported as statistics: 237 reported by SPCJ; and 6 reported by Kantor Center.