Naples is the most dangerous city in Europe, not.
According to the Numbeo crime index 2017, Naples is the most dangerous city in Europe. Other two cities from the South of Italy (Bari and Catania) appear in the top 10.
But is it really true?
I spent about 7 years of my life in Catania and the city, even if full of problems and troubles, didn’t feel that unsafe. Not even remotely. And what about Malmo? A Swedish city occupying the second place? That‘s at least odd…
The whole table didn’t feel right, so I decided to understand a bit more how the index was calculated. The first thing I noticed is that the index refers to year 2017.
The year just started and Southern Italy (and Europe) is already showing his devilish nature?
The actual index is based on online surveys, voluntarily submitted by people. I have never been to Bolzano, but I decided to take the survey anyway:
The problem with indices like the Numbeo one is that they look official, but they’re not.
People’s attention span is short. It’s even shorter online. If Google shows them in big characters that Catania has a high crime rate, they will trust that. If someone sees a link on a Facebook post stating that Sicily is dangerous he (or she) will share it. And, as a corollary, people from the affected areas will convince themselves to live in areas which are worse than others. This happened to the South of Italy starting 150 years ago.
Look at the Malmo case. Teens getting shot, cars getting burnt. Malmo is definitely one of the most problematic cities in Sweden. But does it really deserve the second place as the most dangerous European city? Probably not. It’s also a matter of expectations and proportions. Sweden is an extremely quiet Country, so a strike of crimes happening in one of its Cities will make survey responses jump to one side of the scale. And if the media or Google bombard you saying that Naples or Catania are some of the most dangerous places in Europe, you’ll end up believing that. The survey responses will reflect exactly that.
Whenever reading an article or staring at a chart, be critic. Verify your sources. Think before sharing. And whenever someone tells you how bad the South of Italy is, show them this video and ask them if they’ve ever been there.
