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Comment by thoraway1010 | Hacker News Reader

Ha.

The swiss had something like 50 murders TOTAL of which only 3 were unsolved. That's something like 0.5 per 100,000?

The USA is probably an ORDER OF MAGNITUDE higher?

The solve rates for crimes in the USA is horrendous - something like 35% in places like Baltimore.

Before we talk about how little the swiss have to show for their approach, perhaps we should allow them a touch of credit for creating a system that has reduced homicides AND led to the identification and conviction of those who commit them?

And maybe do something about the 15,000+ people killed per year in the US?

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The US rate for murder is five per 100,000. So yes, one order of magnitude higher than that of Switzerland (assuming your number is accurate).

Source: https://usafacts.org/data/topics/security-safety/crime-and-j...

The story is about how a specific technology doesn't move the needle much, not about where the needle started off at.

Indeed, and the Swiss are being compared to the Swiss. (Canton to canton)

The point is that the technology needs data. If crime is very low it is difficult to gather enough meaningful data.

But perhaps a counterpoint is that if crime is high maybe there is no need to use algorithms to tell you which areas are worse...

Overall, I'm thinking that the value of this technology is to use enough data to detect any trends or patterns that are not obvious and would likely go undetected otherwise.

But where the needle started at can absolutely matter. Ten degrees of movement need not be equal effort when it is obtained starting at 5 versus starting at 50.

The headroom that remains to improve will likely matter too, less the headroom more difficult it might be to reap the last inch.

But it misses the larger context which is that Swiss are proactive in trying to reduce crime through many approaches. They use many automated tools, hotspot mapping etc. The article even mentions they use something like 20 tools.

As a result of this larger effort, they have kept crime low and solve lots of serious crime.

The US has really moved to what I might call the critique approach in this area. No one is willing to propose actual solutions, but everyone likes to complain and critique. This creates somewhat of a do nothing or can't do effect in govt especially and I think also reduces attractiveness of professions like policing or working in govt (you can't ever actually do or even try things without folks eagerly slamming you).

Pretty pathetic - and doesn't bode well for our covid testing / tracing response either.

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