Crime and Fear — Germany and Switzerland

Crime and Fear

Germany and Switzerland, the same questions: what gets recorded, what gets cleared — and how safe do people feel? The analyses draw on official police statistics, on the European Social Survey and on the victim surveys of both countries. Every figure carries its source, case count and liwithation; correlations are labelled as correlations, not as causes.

Germany

The Federal Republic and each federal state

6'600cases per 100,000 inhabitants

25.0 %feel unsafe

83.5 MioInhabitants

To the map of Germany →

Switzerland

The Confederation and each canton

6'105cases per 100,000 inhabitants

8.9 %feel unsafe

9.1 MioInhabitants

To the map of Switzerland →

What the two pages show

In both countries the sense of safety does not follow recorded crime. In Germany the number of recorded offences has fallen by 18 per cent since 1993, while the share of people feeling unsafe in 2023 stood at 25.0 per cent, above its 2002 level. In Switzerland recorded crime has been practically flat since 2009, yet the share feeling unsafe fell from 16.1 to 8.9 per cent. Both findings rest on the same question in the same survey — and they contradict the assumption that fear simply follows crime.

Was hier nicht states: why that is so. The pages document correlations, not causes. Anyone offering an explanation should be able to say which observation would refute it.