No, Nantes is not a more dangerous city than Bogota

• Hundreds of internet users recently shared a world ranking of cities based on a safety index.

• According to this ranking, French cities are among the most dangerous in the world.

  Even Nantes would have become less safe than Bogota, in Colombia, yet known for its high crime rate.

• The methodology used is in fact highly dubious, since it is only votes on "the feeling of security" expressed by a few hundred Internet users, without scientific method.

Would the city of Nantes turn into the Far West?

For several days, Internet users have been relaying publications claiming that the city has become more dangerous than Bogota, the capital of Colombia, a metropolis and a country known for the violence caused, in particular, by drug trafficking.

Worse, the city of the Dukes of Brittany would not be the only one to become a real "cut-throat", since other French cities would be singled out.

At the origin of this rumour, we find an article from

, published on September 23 and taken up by

​​on the same day.

Entitled "Insecurity: Nantes, Paris, Marseille, French cities unscrew in the world ranking of the safest cities", it highlights a world ranking of the safest places (and therefore also of the most dangerous), in which the cities French women pale in comparison.

But if this ranking makes people react, it is better not to rely on it… at all.

FAKE OFF

This ranking was made by Numbeo, a website registered in Serbia.

It is a database accessible to everyone on the Internet and which offers various figures, statistics and indices from around the world, most often on the cost of living, real estate or quality of life.

We find the ranking, which takes into account 471 cities on the planet and gives, for each, a crime index and a security index.

It is constantly evolving, and there are several French cities poorly classified in terms of their level of security.

A dubious and subjective methodology

Many voices on social networks quickly decried – rightly – this ranking.

The methodology questions, since it is created automatically via a vote of Internet users, and is based only on "the sole feeling of travelers", as

points out .

No check is made on the identity of visitors, nor on their link with the city (inhabitant, tourist).

You can vote as many times as you want.

Everyone can thus rate any city according to the idea they have of it, without necessarily having set foot there one day.

Just answer fifteen questions (quite oriented).

An easily manipulated classification

Most of the cities present in the ranking collect a few hundred votes (452 ​​for Nantes, 443 for Bogota), delivered without any scientific methodology (sampling, representativeness of the population, etc.) or official data.

How Brest could become the most dangerous city in the world?

Explanations in this thread 👇 pic.twitter.com/HSS5419nGf

— David Bertho (@dbertho) September 27, 2022

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An Internet user also had fun proving the lack of seriousness of this system by creating “bots” (small automatic software) in order to place Brest (29) in first place among the most dangerous cities in the world.

A few hours later, the challenge was successful and the Finistère city was ahead of Caracas (Venezuela) and Pretoria (South Africa) on the podium.

Incredible homicide rates

In fact, the feeling of security is evaluated in France by INSEE, which published a report on the subject in 2021. Over the period 2010-2019, “the overall feeling of insecurity remained stable, around 20% ".

But this feeling does not necessarily reflect, by definition, reality.

For example, over this same period from 2010 to 2019, crimes and offenses recorded by the police and the gendarmerie for sexual violence have doubled.

This does not mean that the number of incidents has doubled, but that they have been reported more often "in a context of freedom of speech and incitement to lodge complaints", says the report.

Furthermore, it is difficult to compare crime rates between cities or between countries, since they are not recorded and counted in the same way.

Still, according to World Bank statistics, the intentional homicide rate in France was 1 per 100,000 inhabitants in 2020, compared to 23 in Colombia.

Miscellaneous facts

Nantes: A police officer seriously injured after a refusal to comply

Justice

Nantes: Two suspects imprisoned after the gang rape near the Machines

• Company

• fake-off

• Security

• Nantes

• Pays de la Loire

• Paris

• Ile-de-France

• Bogotá

• Colombia