Attack at Lyon station: “It was the withdrawal of the State which caused a surge of violence”, according to Alain Bauer

Sylvain Allemand // Credits: STEPHANE DE SAKUTIN / AFP 12:10 p.m., February 4, 2024

Two months after the knife attack on the Bir-Hakeim Bridge in Paris, the capital was again hit by a stabbing attack. A 32-year-old Malian injured three people, one seriously, with a knife at Lyon station in the 12th arrondissement. The assailant was placed in the psychiatric infirmary of the police headquarters. He will stay there until Sunday evening or Monday to be seen by doctors. Guest of the Europe 1 weekend news interview, criminologist Alain Bauer, believes that these attacks are the result of “the withdrawal of the State which has caused a surge in violence”. 

"The State decided that it no longer wanted to (protect the French, editor's note). When it was created, its promise was to guarantee the security of the Nation. The creation of a gendarmerie and a police force as well as the sedentarization of law enforcement in the territory had allowed a considerable reduction in physical violence,” explains the professor of criminology. A bygone era, according to him, because of the reduction in public services which have reduced the place of the State in its role of protecting the population. “Criminals and violent people now occupy the space because they say to themselves ‘the State is no longer there, we might as well go there’,” he adds. 

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Increasingly random violence 

Asked about the random aspect of these attacks, Alain Bauer would like to point out that most of the violence happens during confrontations between people who know each other beforehand. Despite this observation, he emphasizes that there is an increase in random violent acts. “A look, a word or a gesture can lead to reactions that lead to a process of greater expression of violence,” says the expert. A situation explained, according to him, by a "slippage" of virtual violence into reality linked to the absence of tools for regularizing violence, including Justice.