93.5% of the population of Rotherham were born in England (and a further 1.3% in other parts of the UK). 96.6% of the population have English as a first language. 66.5% of the population are Christians; 22.2% identify as having no religion; just 3.6% identify as Muslims. Rotherham is not “an area populated by Muslim immigrants”. Rotherham may be an area “where crime is extremely hight and a breakdown in law and social order seems to be occurring”, but if so the reasons don’t seem to be what your post implies.
The first link of that article links to a police report entitled “Criminal Networks with Large Influence on Local Society”.
The first two paragraphs of the paper’s summary:
So, to summarize that abbreviated summary, “there are some places in Sweden where there is more crime than in the rest of society. It’s mostly not organized crime.” No no-go zones.
French social decay follows a different pattern than it does in the U.S. Despite claims to the contrary from the American fan-wankers, France has desperate crime and poverty problems as well but it is just a little better hidden off to the side normally just barely out of sight. The big difference is that the poor, especially Muslims, are warehoused well outside of big cities like Paris so the most dangerous areas are mostly in the suburbs rather than in the cities proper. The biggest mistake that the French made (and continue to make) is the same one that the U.S. made in the 1950’s - 1970’s. They built giant high-rise housing projects whose sole purpose was to segregate the poor from everyone else. That absolutely does not work as the U.S. found out decades ago. If you warehouse a bunch of marginalized poor people in concentrated housing projects, you will get nothing but crime, social decay and heartache.
This isn’t a new revelation. It has been patently obvious for a very long time. The Muslim areas outside of Paris have a history of going into going into out of control riots for weeks at a time where everything in sight including cars are torched for recreation. It is a very unstable situation and will continue to be so until they figure out how to break up those cells of hooliganism, poverty and anti-government sentiment.
That doesn’t mean that you are more than 50% likely to be killed just by walking through one of those projects after dark but they are areas where the normal rules of the city proper don’t apply anymore and chaos is much more likely to break out.
Adding to my post above: looking at the maps in the report, I currently live in one of these areas, and used to deliver newspapers in a different one. Over the years, I did see a few instances of vandalism in the second area, but it’s not a place I would be worried to go alone in the middle of the night (that’s kind of what you do when delivering newspapers). It’s certainly not a no-go zone. In fact, one time delivering newspapers I met a man (an immigrant, even) who had noticed that his neighbour had forgotten their keys in the lock, and remarked to me how that’s completely okay because Sweden is so safe and free of crime. While I’m not quite as convinced as he was (my usual reaction to that was to drop the keys in their mail slot), he certainly didn’t think he was living in a no-go zone. 
There has been a similar story going around that “100% of rapes in (insert Scandinavian city here) are perpetrated by Muslims”. This story started with Oslo as far as I know, but in the fashion of urban legends it has mutated to include other cities.
Here’s the real story: over a fairly long period of time in Oslo, in all of those rapes reported to the police where the rapist was a stranger to the victim, the victim reported that the rapist was “not ethically Norwegian”.
All those rapes where the victim knew the rapist were specifically excluded. And it goes without saying that any rapes that were not reported to the police could not be included. “Not ethnically Norwegian” is by no means the same thing as “Muslim”, either; anyone with a darker skin tone or a foreign accent could be put in that category. Unless the rapist was caught (and in most cases he was not) or somehow revealed his religion to the victim, there’s no way of knowing what it was.
In short, we have a molehill of truth that has been incorporated into a mountain of speculation.
It looks to me like the same thing is happening in the “no-go area” stories. The molehill of truth, that these are rough, high-crime areas where outsiders would not feel safe, is being blended in with the story tellers’ own prejudices to create mountains of stories of sharia law enclaves and infidels being chased away.
Cite?
I concur with most of what **Shaggy **says. Our poor and blue collar are squirrelled away in the “banlieues” (suburbs) and the “cités” (new towns built from scratch after WW2) and, yeah, they tend to be homes to the HLMs (“low rent housing”), which are more or less a copy/paste of what you know as The Projects - concrete over concrete, thin walls, small packed appartments, tags and aggro rottweilers and junkies and piss smell in the stairwells…
There are some poor enclaves within the cities themselves (e.g. in Paris the 18th & 20th would fit the bill), and some hoity toity banlieues (Neuilly, Versailles…) but generally speaking, and even stereotypically, the pattern holds. So much so that listing something like “Mantes-la-Jolie” as your place of residence on your resume is pretty much a death sentence - you’ll automatically be assumed to be a delinquent or troublemaker by prospective employers.
I have to ask; do you really, honestly have to ask for a cite that a country with sixty-five million people has criminals and poor people?
I expect that he was asking for a cite for the other part of the quote; that "French social decay follows a different pattern than it does in the U.S. "
Listen to “Thela Hun Ginjeet” by King Crimson for a live on-the-scene report by a geeky American musician who wanders into the wrong neighborhood in London where he is detained and questioned by Rastafarian drug dealers and then by the police. Before he laughs in relief from having escaped the clutches of both.
I’ve heard about these areas too and am still wondering, are these areas bad enough that cops literally don’t go there? What about mail delivery, fire and emergency services, and utilities?
Nah. Quite the opposite, they usually tend to see a more robust (and aggressive) police presence. The 2005 riots for example were triggered by the death of two innocent teenagers who were trying to hide from the cops. They broke into an electrical substation and got zapped for their troubles.
[QUOTE=Wikipedia]
According to statements by Mr. Altun, who remains hospitalized with injuries, a group of ten or so friends had been playing football on a nearby field and were returning home when they saw the police patrol. They all fled in different directions to avoid the lengthy questioning that youths in the housing projects say they often face from the police. They say they are required to present identity papers and can be held as long as four hours at the police station, and sometimes their parents must come before the police will release them.[6]
[/QUOTE]
If you (or any Doper) wants to get a relatively faithful idea of what ZUS look like, or what life is like for people who live there whether they’re in or out of the cité, I’d suggest the movie “La Haine” (The Hatred). The banlieues haven’t changed much since 1995. But of course, why should anything be done ? Jusqu’ici, tout va bien.
Correct. And from what I’ve read in this thread so far, the only difference is geographical – American slums are mostly inner-city, French slums are mostly suburban.
ISTM the French have the better of that comparison. They have cities they can use. That’s a lot better than having suburbs you can use.
I do not think you understand well the banlieue in French or in the France specifically. This is not like the american sub-urbs and I think for the poor populations that are trapped in the banlieue far from work and ghetoized, your cheery evaluation is very naive if not hypocritical. Why it will be better to have the dirigiste elite to enjoy a city center that allows them to ignore the banlieue is a mystery to me.
They’re going to ignore the poor anyway.
The people who live in the slum-suburbs are also “the French”…
As Kobal has noted, cops do go there, rather more than is strictly necessary. Mail delivery and utilities operate just as in the rest of the country. Public services, especially welfare and child support, tend to be spotty, mostly because they are understaffed, and have to face a much greater demand than in our wealthier centre villes.
Some years ago, during a bout of rioting (not sure if it was the one Kobal refers to), firefighters arriving on the scene were pelted with stones. I don’t remember hearing about such incidents ever since. Firetrucks and ambulances do go there.
Apparently the FOX fear-mongering over these supposed no-go areas causes great amusement among the French.
Incidentally, I was in Paris last month and I was stoned, beheaded, gang-raped and burned alive. I got better.
Asked for a glass of Californian Chardonnay, did you ?