A new report from the Ile-de-France Mobilités (IDFM) has claimed that theft offences have dramatically increased this year to “unequalled levels” across the Paris metro system.

Île-de-France Mobilités, the authority that controls the various transport companies in the Paris region, said that during the first ten months of this year there were 7,485 thefts compared to 4,721 during the same period in 2018, Le Figaro reports.

Around two-thirds of the thefts have been non-violent robberies such as pick-pocketing, which have increased by a staggering 74 per cent this year.

Valérie Pécresse, the head of Île-de-France Mobilités, said that the IDFM will be announcing a new plan to combat the rise in thefts on the Paris Metro and the RER where some stations, such as Châtelet-Les-Halles RER station, have seen a doubling in the number of thefts.

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Ms Pécresse also slammed the French government, claiming that some of the responsibility for the rise was due to a downsizing among the police prefecture and a lack of available officers, while the IDFM has invested in 785 additional security staff.

In order to combat the rise in thefts, Pécresse called on the government to increase the police levels back to the same number as 2015.

The Paris Metro has also seen a spike in sex crimes this year, with a report from March claiming that sex attacks had increased by 30 per cent in 2018, with over 1,000 cases reported to the police. Previous surveys had shown that around half of the violence against women occurred on public transport as well.

In 2018, a police officer who worked in plainclothes on the metro system revealed that the vast majority of sex attackers on the metro were men from migration backgrounds.

“For more than ten years that I have done this job, the suspects I have arrested are a very, very large majority from a North African origin,” he told Le Figaro.

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