Meanwhile, the police in Geneva are concerned that changes made last year to the procedures under the Swiss penal code have paradoxically placed additional hurdles in their path, notably when dealing with first-time offenders. “When we arrest criminals who come from France, some actually tell us upfront that they expect greater clemency in Switzerland than in France,” Ms. Bonfanti said.

Yves Bertossa, a public prosecutor, noted that the revised code made it significantly tougher to justify holding suspects in preventive detention. The legal change, he added, was “designed with small and quiet Swiss towns in mind, not a city like Geneva.”

Geneva’s crime problem has also raised concern in Bern, the Swiss capital. The Geneva residence of the Swiss ambassador to the United Nations was among about 20 diplomatic buildings that were broken into last summer. Since September, the Geneva and federal government authorities have been negotiating over who should pay for additional security. While Geneva wants the Swiss government to raise its annual contribution of 16.5 million Swiss francs, or about $18 million, to the cost of guaranteeing security for the 40,000 residents linked to the United Nations and other international organizations, Bern has questioned whether Geneva efficiently spent past subsidies.

Whatever the outcome of the negotiation, Olivier Coutau, who handles issues relating to international organizations on behalf of the Geneva government, argued that the security problem “should not be dramatized.”

Despite some recent armed robberies of bank branches, post offices and gas stations, only a fraction of crimes had involved physical violence. Meanwhile, the most recent police survey among Geneva-based foreigners, published in April of 2010, showed 92 percent of respondents would recommend moving to Geneva to family and friends. “There’s no point denying the problem, but we haven’t reached a level where expats feel that it’s become horrible to live here because of crime,” Mr. Coutau said.

Echoing such a view, Christian Dunant, a Swiss ambassador who is the director of the Geneva Welcome Center, which helps foreign civil servants and others settle in the city, argued the crime problem was probably less worrying for such expatriates than the recent rise of the Swiss franc against the euro and the dollar, the currencies in which most are paid. Still, he said that he personally deplored “having to avoid at night some neighborhoods that used to be perfectly pleasant.”