Newly released government crime data out of Switzerland, a country many regard as a kind of Alpine paradise, suggests the country may not be as immune to the societal and cultural breakdown affecting most Western European countries today.
The figures, published last month by the Federal Statistical Bureau, surprisingly mirror crime data in France, Germany, Sweden, and other Western European countries, and reveal that foreign-born nationals—despite composing just over a quarter of the population—made up nearly half of all homicide and rape convicts in 2022.
Of the 93,693 people who were convicted and sentenced for committing crimes last year, which represents just a 3% year-over-year increase, 53,895 were non-Swiss nationals, which means that foreigners comprised 57.5% of all criminal convictions.
The alarming statistical data is likely to come as a surprise to many since Switzerland has been ruled by the Swiss People’s Party (SVP), a national-conservative, anti-immigration party, for decades.
An analysis of the data, conducted by the French-speaking statistician Marc Vanguard, indicates that foreign nationals were grossly overrepresented in convictions for serious, violent crimes like homicide, rape, assaults, and aggravated thefts. For instance, non-Swiss nationals made up 44% and 47% of convictions for homicide and rape, respectively, 45% of assault convictions, and 41% of aggravated theft convictions.
Additionally, Vanguard’s analysis revealed that migrants from the Maghreb region—which encompasses North African countries like Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco—were seven times more likely than Swiss nationals to be convicted of a crime. Meanwhile, nationals from countries in sub-Saharan Africa were five times more likely than their Swiss counterparts convicted, and those from Afghanistan and Pakistan were three times more likely.
Conversely, Chinese nationals have lower conviction rates than Swiss do, while foreign nationals from other EU member states, Russia, and Ukraine had comparatively similar conviction rates to Swiss nationals.
“Swiss [crime] data is perhaps the most robust in Europe. Conviction rates are calculated by dividing an exact number of convictions by an exact population: only residents with a renewable or long-stay residence permit,” Vanguard remarked, adding:
The link between immigration and insecurity is undeniable. It is time to disseminate these figures widely to help raise collective awareness.
Similar trends have been observed in official crime statistics across Western European countries, including Germany, Austria, Sweden, Denmark, France, Italy, and Finland, all of which have welcomed unprecedentedly large numbers of foreigners from foreign cultures in the past decades.
