Crime and nationality: what the numbers say – and what they don't
Police statistics record suspected cases and registered offences, not the 'criminality' of entire population groups. Anyone comparing nationality must also consider reference groups, age, sex and residence status.
When crime and nationality are debated, numbers are often used as a quick answer. Switzerland's Police Crime Statistics do in fact provide data on accused persons by nationality and residence status. They can therefore make differences visible. But they do not answer the far broader question of which people are 'more criminal'.
The reason lies not in a missing statistic but in what it measures. The Police Crime Statistics count offences registered by the police and the persons accused. It is not a statistic on final convictions. And it does not capture all the factors that would matter for a fair comparison of different population groups.
What the police statistics count
The Federal Statistical Office reports a total of 92,147 accused persons for 2025. Of these, 38,821 were Swiss nationals and 53,326 foreign nationals. The second figure, however, covers various groups: persons resident in Switzerland, persons from the asylum sector, and other foreign persons without permanent residence. These categories have different age structures, life situations and opportunities for contact with the police and authorities.
The data are therefore not wrong when they report separate groups. It only becomes problematic when a property of nationalities is derived from them without further examination. A comparison of absolute figures can, for instance, take account neither of the size of the respective population group nor of its composition. Even a rate per inhabitant is only a first step, because age and sex correlate strongly with risk in many offences.
Suspicion is not a conviction
A second point is legally central: a person is recorded as accused when the police investigate them in connection with an offence. That does not mean that a court will later find the person guilty. Proceedings may be discontinued, charges may fail, or accusations may turn out to be unprovable. The presumption of innocence applies in all categories of the statistic.
Moreover, types of offence are not equivalent. Property offences, violations of foreign nationals law, traffic offences and serious violent crimes have different causes, different reporting rates and different investigative practices. Anyone who bundles all offences into a single indicator can obscure important differences.
The Federal Statistical Office therefore publishes tables by offence group, residence status and further characteristics. This differentiation is not a minor detail. It determines whether a figure describes an observation or is charged up into an unsupported explanation.
Figures need the right comparison
A rate can only be meaningfully compared if it uses the same base population. Anyone who combines people without residence, people from the asylum sector and settled residents into a single figure is comparing groups with very different legal and social starting positions. The population structure changes too. A group with an above-average share of young men will look different in offence categories that mainly involve young men than a group with a broader age mix.
This makes neither an offence less problematic nor a statistic worthless. But it shifts the question away from the label of a group towards verifiable factors: Which offences are increasing? Who is affected? Which prevention reaches the at-risk groups? And which sanctions are effective?
Why simple answers do not hold
Crime does not arise from nationality alone. Research and statistics regularly show that social situation, age, sex, residential environment, education, labour market integration and a history of violence can be relevant. None of these variables allows predicting the behaviour of an individual. Together, however, they explain why average values can differ between groups.
For security and integration policy this means: problematic developments must neither be glossed over nor ethnicised. If certain offences increase or individual groups appear disproportionately as accused persons, what is needed is precise prevention, effective law enforcement and an honest analysis of the risk factors. Blanket suspicion does not help here; it undermines trust and can lead to the most effective measures being overlooked.
A good debate about crime therefore begins with a clear question: what exactly is being counted – suspects, convictions, offences or victims? Only then can one ask which measures follow from it. The statistics provide a basis for this. But they replace neither the legal examination of the individual case nor the societal responsibility not to turn figures into judgments about whole groups.
