Western Europeans believe crime is rising despite fall in overall rates, poll finds

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.