Covid Up, Crime Down; Riehen Reduces Light Pollution; Travel Rule Change

News For 1 September 2020

On Monday, the public prosecutor's office released criminal statistics for the first half of the year 2020.  It seems, the quarantine provisions and associated lockdown of people had a generally positive effect on reported crime rates falling 15% during the period.  Specifically, it appears that property crimes like theft, burglary and robbery fell most significantly with criminals and their prospective victims staying indoors.  However, the news is not all rosy, with a rise in reported assaults and physical injuries, attributed to increased levels of domestic abuse.  For a sense of the scale of total criminal violations, 21,234 were recorded for the year 2019 by the prosecutor's office.

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Riehen, a municipality of Basel-Stadt has embarked on an ambitious plan to replace all public lights with LED lamps by 2027.  The endeavor, which is estimated to cost more than three million francs will save approximately 160,000 kilowatt hours of electricity at an annual savings rate of 50,000 francs.  The replacement of the bulbs in approximately 2600 street lights will also mean a reduction in light pollution - which is also a goal of the municipality.  

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As of Monday, the Swiss State Secretariat for Migration has enhanced its enforcement of quarantine rules for arriving passengers to the country.  Previously, people arriving from at-risk countries could circumvent the quarantine requirement by arranging for a layover in a "low risk" country during their travel into Switzerland.  The rules now, however, consider only the country of origin for a traveller when determining the requirement to quarantine.  For many expats in Basel, for example, that have travelled to the US - a high risk country - during the summer holidays, they will be required to quarantine even if their travel connection was through Canada or another "low-risk" country.