Crime index 2025: 10 least safe countries in the world; check full list

Time of India

7 days ago

Imagine you're planning your next trip, or maybe thinking of relocating, and you start Googling 'Is this city safe?' You're hit with a barrage of Reddit threads, government stats, and that one friend who swears that the city is not safe.
Well, here is a list of countries that ranked in the top of the Crime Index of Numbeo, a crowd-sourced rating system that estimates the overall crime level in a city or country.
Contributors rate their perception of local crime on a scale from -2 (strong negative perception) to +2 (strong positive perception). These numbers are then filtered using spam-detecting algorithms to weed out bots, trolls, and people demonstrating suspicious behaviour. The final score is scaled from 0 to 100 for easy understanding:
Very low crime: Below 20
Low: 20–40
Moderate: 40–60
High: 60–80
Very high: Above 80
So if a place scores a 78, it's not exactly safe after dark.
The Safety Index, by the way, is just the Crime Index's mirror twin. The higher the Safety Index, the more comfortable you should feel walking alone at night without clutching your keys like Wolverine claws.
What are people rating?
Numbeo asked its users to weigh in on several crime-related factors, such as:
Perception of general crime levels
How safe people feel during the day and at night
Concerns about being mugged, robbed, harassed, or worse
Severity of property crimes (think theft, burglary, vandalism)
Severity of violent crimes (assault, homicide, sexual violence)
It's a pretty comprehensive list, and while it may not reflect actual crime reports, it certainly tells you how people feel about their environment.
And sometimes, that gut feeling is just as important.
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What about official crime stats?
Governments around the world do collect actual crime data, usually based on reported incidents per capita. But comparing those numbers internationally is like comparing apples to secretive oranges.
Here's why:
In some countries, people underreport crime—either due to mistrust in the police or cultural stigma.
Some governments fudge the numbers for political reasons.
(Looking at you, suspiciously safe autocracies.)
And in many places, data isn't even available, or is too outdated to be useful.
So, while government statistics are useful within a single country, they're not always great for global comparisons. That's where Numbeo steps in, offering a perception-based, cross-border index that's continuously updated and semiannually reviewed.
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So who's winning (or losing) the safety game?
Here's a snapshot from Numbeo's current index:
Haiti - 32.6
Papua New Guinea - 31.6
Venezuela - 29.0
Afghanistan - 28.1
South Africa - 25.4
Honduras - 24.8
Trinidad and Tobago - 19.5
Syria - 19.3
Jamaica - 19.0
India isn't in the top 10, or should we say, bottom 10, but it still finds itself in the 'moderate' crime bracket. Urban safety remains a concern, especially with rising population density and varying law enforcement standards.
Do note that Numbeo's Crime Index is perception-based, crowd-sourced, and influenced by personal experience. Safety isn't just about crime rates—it's about how safe people feel, and that, in turn, shapes neighborhoods, travel choices, and city planning.