About 90% of Helsinki residents feel safe on average in Helsinki, according to a safety survey carried out by the City of Helsinki.
Residents' perceptions of their own safety in urban areas have not changed when compared to the previous survey that was conducted three years ago.
Safety in Helsinki is perceived as being relatively good in general, with residents assessing their own neighbourhoods as being even safer.
More than half of the respondents to the safety survey perceived their neighbourhood as safe, with just over a third perceiving it as fairly safe.
“Helsinki is still perceived as being a safe city, which needs to be the case in future as well. Helsinki’s good level of perceived safety can also be seen in international measurements. One of the City's core tasks is to strengthen a strong perception of safety,” said Mayor Daniel Sazonov.
Although perceived safety in Helsinki is high on average, perceptions of safety vary by the time of day. Evenings and especially late weekend evenings are more commonly perceived as unsafe.
A significant proportion of respondents (27%) feel unsafe while moving alone in Helsinki city centre late on weekend evenings.
Approximately 60% say they feel at least fairly safe there and 14% responded that they cannot say how safe they feel.
Perceptions of safety also vary considerably according to gender and age. For example, weekend evenings in Helsinki city centre are perceived as unsafe by just over a third of women and just under a fifth of men.
By comparison, as many as 40% of respondents under the age of 20 perceive them as unsafe, whereas only approximately a quarter of middle-aged respondents felt this way.
Especially among older respondents, there are a lot of people who almost never go to the city centre on weekend evenings and, thus, cannot assess their safety.
“The Helsinki Police Department listens carefully to feedback from residents, the City and stakeholders, maintains real-time situational awareness and directs its activities on the basis of analysed data. That is why we are now able to arrive more quickly than ever before in the event of an emergency and have significantly increased the monitoring of areas prone to disruptions while also making sure that crimes are effectively solved and that permit services are provided smoothly,” said chief of the Helsinki Police Department, Police Commissioner Jari Liukku.
Helsinki residents’ perceptions of the safety of public spaces have remained unchanged when compared to the previous 2021 survey.
Perceptions of safety in general and the perceived safety of local shopping centres, public transport stations and Helsinki city centre in the evenings have not changed on average.
Even though Helsinki residents’ perceptions of safety have remained unchanged according to the survey, when respondents are asked to assess the development of safety themselves, they generally assess safety as having declined in Helsinki.
Just over half assessed that safety in Helsinki had declined over the past three years, while 40% assessed that it had remained unchanged and only 7% assessed that it had improved. A negative assessment may be influenced by general risk awareness, such as perceptions of increased unsafety among other population groups, or active consumption of crime news.
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Source: www.dailyfinland.fi
