Crime rates in the Balkans are lower than in much of western Europe and falling, contradicting the region’s stereotype as a gangster’s paradise, according to a United Nations report published on Thursday.
Conventional crime – murder, rape, assault, robbery, burglary and theft – is low, says the report, Crime and its Impact on the Balkans, from the UN Office on Drugs and Crime. “In fact, most of the region is safer than west Europe in this respect,” it says. And while organised crime remains an enduring problem, it too appears to be on the decline.
