Have you ever checked actual crime rates? Cause this does not passes smell test. You are way more likely to be robbed or attacked in Prague or Warsaw then in Vienna or Munich or whatever. And the cops will be harder to deal with in Eastern Europe.
Eastern European cities are safer then they used to be in the nineties, sure. They are safe enough to have kids walk around. They are not safer then wester cities which are even more safer in general.
Big Eastern cities have robberies too. And fights too. They are not some kind of hellholes, most are safe enough. But they are not safer then western cities.
Small Eastern cities do have criminality too, for that matter. Both organized and low level one. As I said, it is all improving in general, but claim that they are oh so safer is not true.
Eastern cities can also be safer for foreigners in general. Cities like Prague depend on being tourist hotspots. If they get a reputation for being dangerous, they'll lose a lot of rich people a lot of money. Serious crime against foreigners may be dealt with harshly enough that criminals learn to stick to the locals and limit to mild scams on the tourists. After all, the tourists bring the money that they can then steal from a local at leisure.
>> Cities like Prague depend on being tourist hotspots.
No, they don't. Prague is the capitol of Czech republic, there is a lot of business there, and tourists are just nuisance. Same for big Polish cities like Warsaw or Cracow.
Crimes against foreigners are not treated any different than crimes against locals, there's simply not much crime to begin with.
The 'Paris experience' famously does not scale to the rest of Western Europe. Getting mugged/fleeced by someone on day 1 in Paris is a ubiquitous experience that I have never heard be replicated anywhere else.
> Eastern European cities are safer then they used to be in the nineties, sure. They are safe enough to have kids walk around.
At age 9 and 10, I was travelling every day alone in a city bus to school through a city in Poland in early nineties. Nothing ever happened to me. I don't think there was particularly that much violent crime even then. Car thefts, OTOH, were pretty common until the mid 2000s when the police and state got the hang of it.
Eastern European cities are safer then they used to be in the nineties, sure. They are safe enough to have kids walk around. They are not safer then wester cities which are even more safer in general.