A letter to the Editor this week raised an intriguing point about crime and safety in Bermuda.The letter, rightly, pointed out that the police have reported that overall crime is falling, but online comments and general discussion reflect the belief that crime is rising and getting more severe.In fact, in an online poll on www.theroyalgazette.com this month which asked people if they felt there was more or less crime than there was a year earlier, 57 percent of the respondents said there was more, even though the police had just released statistics showing crime had fallen. That poll was unscientific, but gives a flavour of the public perception. This has been a phenomenon for some time, and it must be frustrating for the police and others to experience it. In part, this is due to the complexity of crime statistics. They cover a gamut of offences, from murders to antisocial behaviour, so getting a clear fix on the overall direction of crime is hard.Even when Bermuda was in the grip of a wave of murders, gun crime and gang violence in 2009 and 2010, overall crime was declining. In theory, the average person probably was safer than they had been, but they did not feel that way. Now that wave of serious crime has subsided and overall crime continues to fall. This is a surprise. In the past, recessions have led to an upsurge in crime, but this has not happened in a real way in Bermuda, despite the worst economic conditions since the Great Depression.This is mirrored elsewhere, including in the US, Britain and elsewhere. With certain exceptions, such as Chicago, crime is either continuing to fall or is flat.The letter writer did compare Bermuda's murder rate to several other countries and cities, and this is a good way of getting a sense of how safe Bermuda is on a comparative basis. Statistics like this have to be treated with some care because of the relatively low numbers of murders in Bermuda and the small population. Most statistics measure murder rates on a number of murders per 100,000 population basis. Bermuda had eight murders in 2011 and has a population of 65,000, giving it a murder rate of 12.3 per 100,000 people. This puts Bermuda between Nigeria (12.2) and Swaziland (12.9) on the world list. For Barbados the rate was 11.3 (31 murders), the Bahamas was 27.4 and Jamaica was 52.2. the Cayman Islands was 8.4, the US was 4.2, Canada was 1.6 and the United Kingdom was 1.2.As for cities, New Orleans was the murder capital of the US in 2010 with 49 murders per 100,000 people, St Louis was second with 40 and Baltimore was third with 34.8. New York City had 6.4 murders per 100,000 people, Boston had 11.3, Atlanta had 17.3 and Miami had 15.4.So Bermuda is more dangerous than New York City and Boston but less so than many other gateway cities. Certainly Bermuda is more dangerous than many countries, taken as a whole, at least judging by murder rates. But it is worth remembering that in the first six months of 2012, Bermuda only had two murders, and if that trend continues, the murder rate will be just 6.15 lower than most US cities, Cayman and elsewhere. But it also shows how statistics can be misleading.Still, why don't people feel safer? One possible reason is that not all crime gets reported. There will be break-ins and assaults to which the police are never called, or where a complaint is not made, as a result of everything from lack of confidence in the police to embarrassment. It may also be that the spread of the internet and the tendency of crime reports to go viral has exacerbated this sense of insecurity, and the media may well have played a role in this as well.It also seems likely that perceptions about crime lag behind reality. If crime surged two years ago, then more people today know and remember someone who has been a victim of crime. That knowledge fades over time, but only over time. New York still has a reputation for crime, despite the reality that it is now one of the safest cities in the US.Bermuda had a reputation for being safe long after crime started to slowly rise, and the reverse appears to be true as well.Finally, even when the facts say crime is falling, there is a strong perception that serious crimes and murders could begin again, as long as the gang problem remains unsolved. And that may explain why people still feel unsafe despite the evidence to the contrary.http://www.bermudapoliceservice.bm/upload/PDFs/BPS%20Crime%20Statistics%20Q2%202012.pdf