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Comment by b_tterc_p | Hacker News Reader

> In most other countries police has an active role in settling disputes using empathy and compassion, instead of just arresting people and locking them away.

This sounds false to me outside of some Western European areas but I don’t have data to support it

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Well here's some data to support my side of the argument. Note that this chart uses a logarithmic scale:

https://i.ibb.co/gMtDhgQ/b.png

Full PDF: https://www.unodc.org/documents/data-and-analysis/Crime-stat...

Sadly I couldn't find the number of arrests made in any useful comparison, but US police have a policy of "taking people in" for almost any offense, so I'd expect it to roughly match that.

Can you explain what you see in this graph? I'm baffled, I don't know what "suspects" means, nor why Canada has 10x as many as Mexico. (Presumably the x-axis is police per million population, or similar.)

The situation is similar to what the parent describes in the Czech Republic (which is considered eastern Europe).

But IIRC these central/eastern European countries don't have very high crime. I presume what GP meant is that one should also look at other places with comparable size crime problems.

I mean comparing Baltimore to (say) Prague is a bit like comparing it to Malibu, I'm not sure we learn much. But compare it to districts of Rio, for instance, and then maybe we can learn something about how different policing approaches play out.

I'd say Poland too, which again, some consider Eastern Europe.

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