- Name
- Proportion of population that feel safe walking alone around the area they live
- Indicator purpose
- The purpose of this indicator is to discern the share of people who feel safe walking alone where they live.
- Abstract
- This indicator refers to the proportion of the population (adults) who feel safe walking alone in their neighbourhood. The concept of ‘fear of crime’ has been used in dozens of crime victimization surveys and the standard formulation used here has been effective in different cultural contexts. It is important to understand that ‘fear of crime’ is a phenomenon that is separate from the prevalence of crime and that may be even largely independent from actual experience, as the perception of crime and the resulting fear of it is mediated by several factors, such as the awareness of crime, the public discussion and the media and personal circumstances.
- Contact organization / person
- Ministry of National Security/Defence
- Unit of measure
- Percentage (%)
- Other characteristics
- Fear of crime’ is an important indicator as a high level of fear can negatively influence well-being and lead to reduced contacts with the public, reduced trust and activities and thus an obstacle to development.
- Classification used
- The question measures the feeling of fear of crime in a context outside the house and refers to the immediate experience of this fear by the respondent by limiting the area in question to the “neighbourhood” or “your area” (various formulations depending on cultural, physical and language context).
- Disaggregation
- age and sex
- Key statistical concepts
- The question used in victimization surveys is: How safe do you feel walking alone in your area/neighbourhood?
Answer: Very safe/fairly safe/bit unsafe/very unsafe/ I never walk alone after dark/don’t know.
The proportion of population that feel safe is calculated by summing up the number of respondents who feel “very safe” and “fairly safe” and dividing the total by the total number of respondents.
- Recommended uses
- The indicator is used by the Ministry of National Security to observe people's sense of fear of crime in a context outside the home.
- Other comments
- While the measurement of fear of crime is widely applied in crime victimization surveys around the world, different practices exist in the operationalization of this indicator – for example, by not requiring the person to “walk alone” or limiting the walking to “at night”. Further guidance on measuring the indicator are currently elaborated by UNODC in collaboration with victimization survey experts. In 2010 UNODC-UNECE published a Manual on Victimization Surveys that provides technical guidance on the implementation of such surveys, based on good practices developed at country level.
All the metadata shown in this document was gathered from United Nation Statistics Division. The metadata was extracted from https://unstats.un.org/sdgs/metadata/.
- Target 2020
- 1. Significantly reduce all forms of violence and related death rates everywhere
