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I always hear this but it seems to mostly be made up? Like yeah, there’s crime in London, but less than in most European or American cities… seems like a narrat
by jama211 1y ago
I always hear this but it seems to mostly be made up? Like yeah, there’s crime in London, but less than in most European or American cities… seems like a narrative that keeps being pushed without merit
- password321 1y agoPotential energy vs kinetic energy. Just because it is not in motion doesn't mean the potential is not there, that's why everyone has Amazon Ring in front of their homes and won't let their kids alone in the park. Relying on police to deter crime or relying on police reports to understand the current crime landscape is beyond naive.
- pjc50 1y agoPotential crime isn't real crime! More importantly, you can't deal with potential crime by making real arrests, because then you have to start arresting people who haven't done anything.
- cs02rm0 1y agoIt's a slightly mixed picture. Knife crime is one area that's been trending up for 10 years now. Shoplifting is at a 20 year high. Fraud is up. Firearms offences are roughly level. But criminal damage is down. Of course, if you call the police for criminal damage, everyone knows they won't turn up and you'll just get a crime number, so unless you're claiming on insurance you're probably less and less likely to report it. We shouldn't be aiming for London (with 200 phones stolen every day as it is) to reach the level of the worst European or American cities.
- iamacyborg 1y ago200 phones a day doesn’t sound like that many given the size of the population and the number of tourists.
- arccy 1y agobut it could be like Tokyo....
- ubercow13 1y agoSupposedly 39% of phone thefts in Europe happen in the UK https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/jul/26/mobile-phone-theft-europe-uk-police https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/jul/26/mobile-ph...
- account42 1y agoWTF yes it does.
- selfhoster11 1y ago10 million people live in London. Surely you'd expect at least some theft of belongings
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- foldr 1y agoLet's do some back-of-an-envelope stats on this. Assuming there are 9 million people in London, that means that 1/45,000 Londoners experience a phone theft on a given day. We can then (very crudely) estimate the probability that a Londoner has their phone stolen over a ten year period: 1 - ((1-45000)/45000)^(365*10) = 0.08 So 200 phones a day translates to about a 8% chance of getting your phone stolen over a period of ten years. I'm obviously not suggesting that the calculation above be taken too seriously. But it shows that 200 phones being stolen a day in a city of 9 million people is consistent with phone theft being a significant but not overwhelming problem. (The adult population of London is around 7 million, and kids are obviously also victims of phone theft, so you won't get a radically different answer if you look at the population over a certain age.)
- iamacyborg 1y ago
- indy 1y agoI live in London and I can tell you no, it isn't mostly made up. The crime rates in other places is irrelevant if the city you've lived in for the last 20 years has become noticeably more dangerous. This is not "a narrative that keeps being pushed without merit", in fact the people who dismiss such claims are often the ones who live very insulated lives.
- piva00 1y agoIt's also quite sad there isn't anyone with a big political voice connecting the dots between Brexit and the rise in crime. Brexit has markedly made the UK's economy weaker, there are less opportunities, the opportunities that exist outside of finance/tech are quite low paid compared to other European countries while the cost of living in London is absurdly high when compared to other major European cities. It's the perfect storm coupled with high immigration: blame immigrants for the lack of opportunities caused by a policy pushed by anti-immigration rhetoric, it will just feed into giving power to Reform which, if given power, will continue to crash the UK's economical prospects. The ship has sailed, it will take the UK quite a while to correct course, perhaps even a generation or so... While that correction course happens British society will just keep eroding away.
- miroljub 1y agoIt is Brexit, but not how you think it. What Brexit did is basically reducing immigration from the culturally and societally compatible EU countries with the immigration from the ex colonies and other third world places.
- indy 1y agoIt's become a feedback loop of "crime", "erosion of trust", "polarisation of communities".
- foldr 1y agoI haven’t personally noticed London getting any more dangerous over the past 10 years that I’ve lived here.
- moffkalast 1y agoOut of the top four crime ridden cities in entire Europe, three are British. https://www.numbeo.com/crime/region_rankings_current.jsp?region=150 https://www.numbeo.com/crime/region_rankings_current.jsp?reg...
- vidarh 1y agoBased on crowdsourced data. Given we know from comparing e.g. Crime Survey data to polls about peoples beliefs about crimes that peoples beliefs about crime rates in the UK are not remotely well correlated with actual crime rates, that page doesn't tell us what you claim it does. It tells us that out of visitors to Numbeo, people who claim to live in 3 British cities report that they are more worried than most others. For Bradford, the data is based on just 131 contributors in the last 5 years: https://www.numbeo.com/crime/in/Bradford https://www.numbeo.com/crime/in/Bradford
- moffkalast 1y agoWell are you aware of any better metrics? That sounds a lot like the Swedish defense, that Malmö only looks bad because the reporting standards are more rigorous. Meanwhile there are literal hand grenades exploding on their streets daily.
- vidarh 1y agoYes, the Crime Survey, which actually surveys representative samples about their direct experience as victims of crime. With 131 biased samples over 5 years, to continue with Bradford, who are not asked about actual crime, but about how they feel about it without an qualification as to whether they have any actual experience with it, this site is not saying anything useful. Presenting it as if it is ranking cities by actual crime rates is ignorant of the data gathering at best, and at worst blatantly dishonest. Then again given the hyperbole you're employing regarding Malmö, I should perhaps not expect you to care much about the veracity of data - yes, attacks with explosives is an escalating problem in Sweden, but nowhere remotely at the scale you're claiming.
- selfmodruntime 1y agoHow convenient for governments to point to crime statistics that they themselves control while police in instances doesn't even respond to calls.