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Les atteintes envers les animaux domestiques enregistrées par la police et la gendarmerie depuis 2016

By October 28, 2022November 9th, 2022No Comments

Document type: official publication, Interstats Analyses N°51 from the French Ministry of the Interior and Overseas Territories

Author: French Ministry of the Interior and Overseas Territories 

Preview: In 2021, the national police and gendarmerie services recorded 12,000 offences involving domestic, tame or captive animals, an increase of 30% compared with 2016 figures (representing an average increase of +5% per year). Of these offenses, 35% involved ill-treatment, 34% serious abuse, 14% unintentional harm to the life and wholeness of an animal and 5% abandonment.
By their nature, unlike the majority of other forms of delinquency, offences against animals mostly occur in rural areas, given the general absence of farm animals in urban areas.
For pet crimes recorded in 2021 alone, a quarter of the complainants are legal moral persons. Conversely, almost all defendants are natural persons, of whom three quarters are men and 18% are over 60 years old, whereas only 4% of defendants for all crimes fall into this age group. Between 2016 and 2021, dogs and cats were the chief victims in such cases (46% and 24% respectively). That said, the species of victims vary according to the type of environment, thus, whereas dogs and cats are the species that are most frequently abused in all urban areas, regardeless of size,  more equines and bovines suffer in municipalities with under 20,000 inhabitants, than in those with more than 20,000 inhabitants.
Among the offences, animals are mainly victims of physical violence (38%), poor conditions (12%) and abandonment (8%). Physical abuse affects cats the most (50%), while reports concerning the victims of poor conditions involve dogs in more than three quarters of cases.
Download PDF in French:Interstats Analysis N°51
Download Data from graphs, maps and tables in Excel: IA 51_Data

Publication resulting in a press release from the Ministry of the Interior and Overseas Territories on October 28, 2022 :Les atteintes envers les animaux domestiques enregistrées par la police et la gendarmerie depuis 2016

Logo of the French Ministry of the Interior and Overseas Territories
From the website of the French Ministry of the Interior and Overseas Territories