Germany
Sigrid Averesch
Most Germans are in a permanent funk, said Sigrid Averesch in Berliner Zeitung, terrified of muggers, terrorists, rapists, you name it, and convinced that crime is getting worse. Yet a new government report shows Germany to be one of the safest countries in the world, in Europe second only to Switzerland. Far from going up, numbers of murders, burglaries, and other serious crimes have been falling for decades. What has been rising, however, is the inflammatory rhetoric of German politicians. Each time a spectacular crime occurs, they outbid each other in their efforts to whip up panic, demanding new laws and scolding judges for letting wrongdoers off lightly. When there was a spate of ugly sex crimes a few years back, for example, the Schröder government rushed through a raft of dramatic new measures. Yet all this does is frighten voters: The offense rate remains precisely the same. So the next time a rape or shooting hits the headlines, try to remember that such events are "hugely exceptional" and that the chance of the rest of us suffering anything similar is vanishingly small.
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