The cost of damage linked to urban violence which followed the death of Nahel M. in June 2023 is estimated at 1 billion euros, according to a report from the Senate Law Committee made public on Wednesday April 10. The “colossal” figure illustrates a phenomenon “without common measure” in the history of urban violence that has occurred in France, declared the senator, member of the Republicans (LR) and rapporteur of the transpartisan information mission, François-Noël Buffet.
Fueled by hearings with police officers, local elected officials, members of associations and sociologists, the report, entitled “Understanding, evaluating, reacting”, formulates twenty-five proposals to “learn lessons” from a response from the authorities public considered operational but “partly unsuitable for the riots and their challenges”.
In eleven days of riots, more than a thousand people were injured, including 782 law enforcement officers, and 16,400 claims were declared to insurers for an amount of 793 million euros, according to the report. drawn up by the fact-finding mission. This amount represents only a part of the damage to property and yet it is already “four times higher than that of the 2005 riots,” said Mr. Buffet. The total damage amounts to 1 billion euros, he added.
Nearly 50,000 rioters, a third of whom were minors
“The death of Nahel M. was the trigger for a movement which had little to do with this tragic element,” lamented the senator before saying that “behind this extreme and unacceptable violence, we must see anger and distrust of authority.” In total, nearly 50,000 rioters were counted by the Senate, among whom a third were minors and 60% first-time offenders.
A typical profile is drawn up by the report, which describes “a man, of French nationality, aged 23 on average, single, without children, often hosted by his parents, with a secondary school diploma, maximum baccalaureate”. Social networks, widely used by the many young people involved, contributed to the increase in violence during the riots, according to the mission's rapporteur, who calls for "imagining a system that allows us to take control of the situation."
The twenty-five proposals detailed in the report include a “digital ban” as well as the supervision of fireworks mortars and the systematic equipment of pedestrian cameras for the police… So many avenues for reflection which the fact-finding mission hopes will be taken up by the government.
