What percentages of people committing rape in France are immigrants. What is the breakdown of it?
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Executive summary
Available official-focused reporting shows that across France in 2023, roughly 87% of people accused of rape were French nationals and about 13% were foreigners, meaning foreigners made up a minority of accused rapists nationwide [1] [2]. Local Paris police data cited in several outlets says foreign nationals accounted for about 77% of solved rape cases in the capital in 2023 — a very different local picture from the national aggregate [3] [4].
1. National statistics: the headline share of accused perpetrators
National-level data cited by fact-checkers and investigative outlets reports 16,672 people were accused of rape in 2023, of whom 87% were French nationals and roughly 13% were foreigners — a clear statement from the Interior Ministry figures as presented in media fact-checks [2] [1]. Those numbers refer to accused persons, not final convictions, and are used by independent debunkers to counter claims that a majority of rapes are committed by immigrants [2] [1].
2. Paris, not France: a sharply different local snapshot
Paris police headquarters’ figures reported and amplified by several media outlets show a contrasting local pattern: in 2023, 97 rapes were recorded in public spaces in Paris and outlets citing the police reported that foreign nationals made up about 77% of rapes solved in the capital that year [3] [4]. This is a localized statistic about solved cases in Paris and cannot be extrapolated automatically to the whole country [3] [4].
3. Who these statistics count — accused, solved, convicted, or resident?
Available sources stress important differences: some tables count people “accused” (national police data), some reports discuss “solved” cases (Paris police) and others discuss victims among asylum-seekers (academic studies). Media and fact-checkers note national figures count accused persons and do not equate to convictions; likewise Paris figures cited concern “solved” cases and may reflect policing, reporting patterns and the specific contexts of public-space assaults [2] [3] [4].
4. Asylum-seekers and victimization: a separate, research-based finding
Academic research focused on recently arrived asylum-seeking women finds very high rates of sexual violence victimization after arrival: for one cohort in southern France, 26.3% experienced sexual violence during the past year and 4.8% reported rape in that year (17 women in the study) — this measures victims among migrants, not perpetrators, and shows migrants can be especially vulnerable to sexual violence [5] [6] [7]. A later 2025 clinical paper cites that figure to show asylum-seekers’ rape incidence was estimated at 4.8% versus 0.26% in the general population, underscoring the different analytic questions being asked [8].
5. Conflicting narratives, political use, and disinformation risks
Several right-wing and partisan outlets have amplified the Paris figures to argue immigration causes a national surge in sexual violence; fact-checkers and analysts counter that national data do not support a majority-of-rapes-by-foreigners narrative [3] [4] [2] [1]. Independent debunkers and Myth Detector emphasize that such claims often conflate different metrics, selective geographies, and accused vs convicted status — a pattern common in disinformation about immigrants and crime [1] [9].
6. What the sources do not answer or make hard to compare
Available sources do not provide a clear, consistent national breakdown by citizenship of convicted rapists over multiple years, nor a single dataset harmonizing “accused,” “solved,” and “convicted” cases across regions (not found in current reporting). They also do not consistently control for variables such as age, location of offense (public vs private), reporting bias, or residency status of foreign nationals versus migrants (not found in current reporting).
7. How to interpret the mixed evidence responsibly
The credible takeaway from these sources is twofold: nationally, foreigners made up about 13% of those accused of rape in 2023 while French nationals were the large majority of accused [2] [1]; locally in Paris, police-reported solved cases in 2023 showed a much higher share involving foreign nationals (around 77%) [3] [4]. Both figures are factual as reported, but they answer different questions and can be selectively cited for opposing political narratives [2] [3] [4].
8. Reporting caveats and recommended further data to seek
To move beyond partial pictures, one should request: (a) national datasets distinguishing accused vs convicted persons by nationality and residency; (b) breakdowns by age, location (public/private), and relationship to the victim; and (c) transparency on how “foreign” is defined (foreign passport, non-citizen resident, or foreign-born). Current sources do not provide this harmonized breakdown (not found in current reporting).