U.N. report on Balkans and safety reports what may be surprising to some, but apparently - South East Europe and Balkan region is one of the safest in the World, at least regarding homicide, robbery, rape and assault.

http://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/frontp...ing-crime.html

The amount of burglaries per 100 000 inhabitants is two times higher in Western Europe. Robbery is astonishing 15 times higher.


What is interesting, is that report takes into account possibility of 'unreported crimes' that may change the statistics. Even with assumed unreported crimes, the levels are still significantly lower.
"...West Europe is seen to have over twice the burglary, over four times as much assault, and 15 times as much robbery as South East Europe"

Adjusted graphs are shown on e.g. page 13 of the report.
http://www.unodc.org/documents/data-...lkan_study.pdf


Now, I wonder whether a perceived Swiss attitude towards "Yugos" is based on reality or media manipulation? It is clear from the report that Yugos are indeed coming from the region that is much more peaceful and law-abiding than Western Europe. The level of violence in S.E. Europe is considerably lower than in Western Europe. Then how come that Yugos, Kosovars etc are perceived as tough, violent, crime-inclined immigrants?

Is it only media manipulation? Or is it so that somehow statistically average Western European, when migrating to Switzerland, suddenly reduce own criminal activities (statistically speaking); while average Eastern European finally finds a fertile ground for own, at-homeland-inhibited criminal activities? Because apparently S.E. European is 15 times less likely to engage in robbery, 2 times less likely to be a burglar, etc.

Present company excepted, might it just be that all the criminal SE European natives are here, and all the good ones are staying home?

I'll take a stab. Perhaps the pickings are greater in Western Europe ? The recent thread on skimming might point towards that.

A Kosovar acquaintance more or less told me the same thing. A lot of the wee shites were basically told to leave their own country, or else.

Or else what? They'd be arrested, packed with concrete shoes and thrown in Danube/Don/Adriatic? It doesn't sound believable.

A peaceful village in, say, Bosnia. All the villagers live in peace and harmony, though there is one that is causing trouble. The others tolerate it while they can, but it becomes unbearable. Everyone knows who is stealing bikes and pies from housemaid's windows.

Then the village elders decide to give a trouble making boy an ultimatum: "Either you move to Basel, Switzerland, and live your life of crime there, or else.."...

probably there's more which can be stolen here than there, comparing income per capita and general purchasing power of the countries.

Our neighborhood just got hit tuesday.. robbing over 8 or so houses and cars on 2 streets.. Cutting convertible tops, stealing electronics and personal belongings out of cars etc... I learned from a neighbor that our canton and others are required to allow foreigners solumn (or whatever you call it) to reside for 3 months before making them leave. Fortunately the 2 thieves were caught on a home security camera and the police have the tapes. Hope they catch the little arse's! Being from Florida I keep my things locked and out of sight so I was not a victim, but I am sad for my neighbors. It's just not right.

According to my friend, more or less, yes.
A similar thing was happening in N. Ireland. Because the paramilitaries basically controlled the drug trade, any "independants" were either persuaded to stop, or were knee-capped. It's not strictly a Balkan phenomenon.

That's terrible that this happened, but what does it have to do with Balkan people?

This illustrates my first post beautifully. How exactly are your first sentence and the second one related? By implying that robbers must have been of foreign origin.

yes, it certainly is not a nice experience.

Unfortunately, sometimes it does. Not so often as the media - over and over again - implies, but still. The criminal gangs have an international activity and, apparently, the police is not quite well equiped to fight this phenomenon.
So I say, insurance and good locks.

I hate bashing any group of immigrants and when it comes to ex-yugoslavia, it is simply rubbish to consider them the "same". The cultures vary very much, that's why they had a war in the first place...

Bottom line from my perspective: The "Yugos" you are meeting here up to my age (early 30s) are basically secundos: Some were maybe born abroad, but most lived here since the early 90s. So it is not some criminal thrown out of Serbia, but a Swiss born problem. It's the same in Germany and while I do not have the numbers for Switzerland, a very hard fact from German cities:

How good are your prospects as an immigrant child? In Germany, the chances that an immigrant child with non-academics as parents vs. a German kid with at least one parent having a higher education have are not the same. The chance that they end up at college themselves are 14:1 for the German kid!
Depending on your political agenda you can as a left person blame "the unfair system" or "the society" while a right winged person would blame the missing language skills or education or interest of the immigrant parents. The truth is as so often typically more complex than any propaganda and somewhere in the middle with a bit of all those factors.

Absolute bottom line:
1. Immigrant kids will statistically end up much more often in low education and low income jobs.
2. Low educated poor people are far more likely to commit crimes.
3. That's why the crime statistics will show that the stereotypes have a reason.

Blaming the secundos for what they are is the most stupid approach, unfortunately favoured by the strongest political party. They would need to get better integrated and understand the importance of education over BMW - then their kids will have a better live and most likely suddenly have a similar crime rate.

I've seen that quoted before, and although I'm not doubting it, I wonder how that stat varies across the country. For example, my daughter is in the PG (Pre-gymnasium) class in CO (Cycle d'orientation ie secondary school). We were talking about her class demographics worked out that a good 1/3 of her class were either foreign or had mixed parentage (Swiss/foreign). In which case, foreign kids are actually over-represented in the top class.

Oh yeah, and 2 of the biggest wee shites in our neighbourhood are both full-on Swiss.

1. They are not perceived as tough, violent, crime inclined immigrants. Unless you are a Blick or 20Minuten reader.

2. The mentioned burglaries, robberies etc. are not committed by Kosovarians, Macedonians etc. who live in Switzerland with permits.
They are done by organised crime, mostly from Eastern Europe - and not from the Balkans - who come over the Swiss borders, burglar, and then leave the country.

3. It is not surprising that the Balkans have a low crime incident regarding burglary, theft, etc. as their society is still in many areas regulated by the Kanun (a set of very strict laws).

this is true; reminds me of the movie "LaHaine" (Hate) by Matthieu Kassovitz. Awesome movie; depicting well the problem of 'no hope for 2nd generation of immigrants'

Switzerland is not Germany or France, with its failed 'integration' politics.

Most of our secondos are over-proportionally succesful, and thriving in society.

Have a look who manages to get the best apprenticeships, or attends uni

Aha, that is why a certain, rather popular, initiative was voted not that long time ago... Mind you I agree with the underlined statement..
Define Eastern Europe and please provide statistics to support your affirmation. Thanks

Ivan "The Rapist", you mean? It is a good example of abusing people's negative perception.

Also, I am not convinced that Swiss doesn't have failed immigration problem, as m_dalloway claims. I would think that situation in Germany / France is actually better than in CH.

But, I digress...

The original topic was on perception vs reality. Or, more precisely, why people coming from much more peaceful backgrounds (S.E. Europe vs W. Europe) are perceived here as more crime-prone and violent.

Doing a search on EF you may find examples of e.g. discarding all the job applicants whose name ends with -ic (indicating origin from Balkans). But you won't find example of discarding "Smiths" from job application process.

Riiight. So why do you think that those "South East Europeans" are so over-represented in the crime statistics? Is it in their genes?

According to the Bundesamt für Statistik are residents from the former Serbien-Montenegro 3.1 times more likely to become criminals than Swiss. Germans like me on the other hand are of course ethically superior to the common Swiss (Helveticus vulgaris) and only have a factor of 0.6!
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ausl%C3...C3%A4t#Schweiz

I'd say the fact that mainly well educated Germans with a job prospect come here while the nationalities with the highest crime rate usually translate into a refugee background without a chance for a decent education does play a role. I simply refuse to believe that Nigerians have evil genes that make them six times more likely criminals than Swiss - or ten times more likely than me... and looking at those numbers do I not think that integration is so super here either. It looks more like that Switzerland manages to attract a lot of the "easier to integrate" people while France or Germany were a bit less successful at choosing who they accepted.

Meeyat,
Yes, Ivan the rapist thing... I find it amusing how people, at times, seem to stand up for a certain group and, the same time, point a finger to another. I cannot get it. Either we agree the negative perception and opinion we exibit on public forums is wrong for all people, or we better restrain from commenting.