European homicide rates are tiny compared to those in America

And what it tells us about the Overton window and perceptions of 'normal' in transatlantic context.

Over the past year, Brussels has been caught up in a crime spree. Or at least, that’s what you’d think if you’re reading the local news.

Brussels is a “dangerous city,” and the Belgium federal government is considering deploying the military to patrol the streets. “After a summer of brutal violence and two deaths in Brussels,” wrote the expat-oriented English language paper The Brussels Times, the interior minister “wants more police, more cameras and soldiers…”

But a closer look at the numbers — especially in transatlantic comparison — tells a very different story. Brussels, and European cities writ large, are miraculously safe compared to their American counterparts.

In 2020, no region in Europe had a homicide rate above 5 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants. In 2020, more than thirty American states did.

Zooming in on Brussels in particular, the numbers become even more stark. In 2023, the Brussels region had a homicide rate of 3.2 per 100,000 inhabitants. In 2023, Baltimore, Maryland, where I lived before moving abroad, had a homicide rate of 46. That’s a homicide rate nearly 15 times higher.

In 2023, there were 262 homicide victims in Baltimore. In 2023, there were 162 homicides in the entire country of Belgium!

Violence in the US and Europe

Here’s a map of the homicide statistics in 2022 from Landgeist, which shows that the most dangerous regions of the continent (and the United Kingdom and Turkey) were in the Baltics, parts of Romania, and Turkey.

And a list of the cities with the highest homicide rate in Europe from 2022, from Eurostat data. Again, cities in the Baltic region top the list.

Let’s contrast those numbers with the United States.

And a list of the homicide rates in major American cities in 2022.

And finally a map comparing the two on the same scale from 2020.

It’s overwhelmingly clear. Europe is significantly safer than the US, by a factor of more than ten in many cases.

But spurning European news coverage of rising crime rates isn’t the point. Instead, looking at divergent coverage on crime rates is a fascinating way to look at the understanding of what’s “normal” in the U.S. and Europe — and what that means for political change in Europe.

Europe’s Overton window

Clearly, European perceptions of violence are different than American ones. In America, a certain level of street violence is ingrained into the culture and and seen as unavoidable, whereas in Europe the Overton window or “window of discourse” is radically different. Gun violence in any form is unacceptable, with even low numbers of shooting deaths and murders grounds for outrage.

European political culture operates with a set of assumptions driving public discourse that make any form of violence far outside of the norm. On the flip side, American culture is markedly more violent than that of many other Western countries.

But as we know from Donald Trump’s influence on American political culture, the Overton window can also shift quickly. Attacking accepted norms of political behavior and chalking them up as muzzling of the elite can be a way a to quickly erode accepted norms. This parallel doesn’t work so well in the case of violence — no one in Europe is advocating for increasing murder rates — but it does apply in more explicitly political realms.

As Europe’s far-right grows in strength, it’s relying on similar ways of pushing the Overton window to shift public debate. Whereas even a few years ago the European right had little sway over public discourse, that’s shifted rapidly in recent years, as issues like immigration and social media tools take center stage.

“Europe’s Overton window were narrowly ajar in the post-Cold War era. European politics was dominated by the center-left and center-right—they disagreed about tax and spending but agreed on globalization, the European Union, and open societies.”

But now, once-fringe politicians and ideas are quickly becoming mainstream, such as Nigel Farage in the UK, or the building of a border wall in Hungary.

At the same time, American political culture is continuing to influence European ones, as the Trump administration looks to support far-right leaders in Europe. Last week, MEPs in Brussels called to condemn the murder of Charlie Kirk in a formal vote in the European Parliament, a clear example of American political culture influencing Europe’s discourse.

The story of homicide rates and news coverage of violence in Europe and America shows that distinct political cultures can cultivate very different standards of discourse around important issues. However, the story of America’s shifting Overton window over the past decade also shows how quickly these standards can change, and how effective fringe politicians can be in pushing their ideas to the center of political discourse.

Europe would be wise to maintain it’s strict Overton window on violence. It should do the same with it’s wider political discourse too.