Historic État 4001

Since 1972, the security services (police and gendarmerie) have been equipped with a standardized tool for measuring the judicial activity of the services based on monthly counts, called "Etat 4001". This administrative document covers crimes and offenses (excluding traffic violations and offenses), recorded for the first time by the security forces and brought to the attention of the judicial institution. The offenses are classified into 107 categories (called "indexes"), very heterogeneous in the nature and seriousness of the facts, but also in the number of offenses recorded each month. Depending on the index, the unit of account used may vary: it may be the victim, for example, in cases of sexual violence (index 46 to 49), the perpetrator, for example, in cases of use (index 57) or use and resale (index 56) of narcotics, the check in cases of falsification and use of stolen checks (index 89), or the vehicle in cases of vehicle theft (index 34 to 38), etc.

It is not relevant to create aggregates that group together indices that do not have the same unit of account. Since its creation in 2014, the Ministerial Statistical Service for Internal Security (SSMSI) has been assessing and ensuring the reliability of these various indices. To date, 50 of the 107 indices used, grouped into 14 indicators, are disseminated monthly (one of the 14 indicators will be added in 2023).

Etat 4001 is not sufficient to meet the needs for statistical information on delinquency. The very old nomenclature of the indexes does not allow for the identification of certain categories of delinquency that have appeared recently, or that we wish to understand more today than before: cybercrime, domestic violence, attacks such as hate crimes (racist, xenophobic, anti-religious, anti-LGBT, sexist, etc.). These crimes and offenses are found in different indexes of the "Etat 4001" (fraud, assault and battery, threats or blackmail, etc.) but cannot be isolated in order to be quantified separately. In addition, the exclusion of contraventions poses a problem, particularly for categories of delinquency for which the boundary between misdemeanor and contravention is not very clearly defined, as is the case for vandalism. Finally, as previously indicated, the heterogeneity of the units of account poses a problem for the constitution of aggregates.