Faced with a sharp rise in home burglaries — now averaging 600 incidents every day — French citizens are increasingly turning to security measures to protect their homes and ensure peace of mind during the summer holidays.
According to an exclusive survey by Odoxa-Groupe Goron for Le Figaro, published this week, 74 percent of French households have now adopted some form of surveillance or protection to deter criminals.
The study highlights deepening fears as burglaries surged by more than 10 percent in 2023, with a staggering 218,700 homes burgled last year alone.
This crime wave has driven many to take preventative action. More than half of respondents arrange for neighbors or friends to check on their homes during absences, while over a quarter notify police or gendarmerie to request additional patrols.
A total of 82 percent of French people now say that safety is a key factor in choosing their holiday destinations, with 40 percent considering it “very important” — a 12-point jump since 2022. Nearly 6 in 10 also worry about home security during vacations, an increase of 10 points since 2021, echoing a wider rise in feelings of insecurity throughout France.
Furthermore, 28 percent of respondents now hire private firms to guard their homes during vacations — a significant rise of over 20 percent in just five years. Support for such measures has soared, with 79 percent favoring private security patrols for entire cities if requested by local authorities, and 76 percent backing their deployment to protect individual homes.
The survey also revealed growing enthusiasm for more advanced security measures; 85 percent of respondents favor video surveillance outside buildings, 80 percent support it inside common areas, and 75 percent approve of using drones or posting guards in lobbies to deter squatters and criminals.
More than half (54 percent) now support arming private security agents, reversing long-standing opposition. Just last year, a majority were against such measures, but rising crime and high-profile incidents appear to have changed public sentiment dramatically.
While authorities maintain that measures like the government’s “Tranquillité Vacances” program — a free public security service run by the French police to help prevent burglaries while people are away on holiday — are effective, many citizens are no longer content to rely solely on public policing.
National Rally (RN) de facto leader Marine Le Pen commented on the survey in a post on X, accusing French President Emmanuel Macron’s government of “continuing to speak of a feeling of insecurity” without “any decision-making, any anticipation, and any desire to contain this everyday crime.”
“The disconnection, denial, and ideological blindness — markers of the collapse of state authority — must now cease if we want public authorities to regain control and fulfill one of their sovereign missions, which is to guarantee the security of the French people,” she added.
In 2022, then Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin acknowledged that 48 percent of criminal acts in the French capital of Paris were committed by foreign nationals, while they accounted for 55 percent of crimes in Marseille and 39 percent in Lyon.
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