Western Europeans Perceive Rising Crime Despite Falling Rates

Western Europeans believe crime is rising in their country, according to a survey, despite long-term overall crime rates falling across the region since the mid-1990s.

The YouGov poll of Britain, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy and Spain found most countries trusted their national police, led by Denmark where 74% of respondents said they had a lot or a fair amount of confidence in police nationally.

Between 57% and 64% of respondents in Spain, France, Germany and Italy also said they felt the same, but Britain was an outlier: only 43% said they had a lot or a fair amount of confidence in the police nationally, compared with 53% who had little.

But while most western Europeans said they trusted their police, often sizeable majorities – ranging from 53% in Denmark to 66% in the UK, 78% in France and 80% in Italy – also said they thought crime was rising in their home countries.

Asked whether they thought violent crime was also increasing, the responses were largely similar: 52% of respondents in Denmark and 59% in Britain said they thought violent crime had gone up a lot or a bit, rising to 76% in Italy and 77% in France.

In fact, despite recent spikes in some violent crimes, often linked to drug trafficking in some countries – notably France and Germany – and a significant increase in online fraud almost everywhere, crime rates generally have been falling since 2000.

Western Europe is much safer today than it was in the late 1980s and 1990s, with murder rates – considered the most reliable metric because homicide is almost always reported – plunging dramatically since 2000, according to Eurostat.

In western European countries such as France, Germany, Italy and Spain, murders have fallen by 30% to more than 50% since the late 1990s. Italy’s annual murder tally has fallen from 1,917 in 1991 to 327 in 2024, giving it one of the lowest rates in the EU.

France’s murder rate, similarly, was roughly 2.3 per 100,000 people in 1995. Even after a string of recent minor increases that have lifted the annual victim tally above 1,000 for the first time in two decades, the per capita rate remains about 1.4 per 100,000.

Experts said France showed why falling overall crime rates remained largely invisible to the public: a rise in gang-related drug violence and increased reporting of sexual and domestic violence have grabbed headlines, eclipsing the long-term general decline.

YouGov’s survey showed more people in France than not (44%) believed crime in their home country was worse than elsewhere, compared with only 27% of Germans and 11% of Danes – 37% of whom felt crime was lower in Denmark than in other countries.

Asked about the prevalence of particular kinds of crime, respondents in Britain (60%) said they thought the UK was unique in suffering from a high rate of knife crime, compared with 40% of Germans and 24%-30% in the other countries surveyed.

A majority of respondents (61%) in France, on the other hand, felt drug trafficking and distribution were more problematic than elsewhere, along with rioting and public disorder (42%, compared with between 7% and 21% in other countries).

Respondents in Spain (56%) and Italy were (46%) were particularly likely to say corruption was more of a problem in their countries than elsewhere, against just 7% in Denmark, where financial and economic crime was seen as the most common.

Italians were also the most likely (41%) to think their country – home to groups including the Neapolitan Camorra and the Calabrian ‘Ndrangheta – had a specific problem with organised crime, compared with 16-32% in other nations. Germans, meanwhile, felt drug trafficking and gang violence (23-25%) were less of a problem for them than elsewhere.