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Comment by germandiago | Hacker News Reader

I often say states behave as mafias. It is a matter of becoming influential enough so that they treat you as a criminal. In the meantime, the streets every day less and less safe, at least in Europe, bc of real criminals, the ones that kill or systematically steal even in organized crime and they do very little about it.

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In the European countries that I've bothered to look, crime statistics are actually down. It's just the perception of crime that is up. Think about who might benefit from creating this kind of misleading perception.

It can be misleading in other ways

For instance it is trivial for a country to reduce crime statistics simply by making things that used to be crimes legal

It can be, but it's easy to check wheter it's true or another fascist dream, right

I thought we were talking data and security, not ideology.

Or in the case of Russia, murders go down, and unidentified bodies that are dead for no particular reason go up by the same amount.

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1477370818794124?ic...

That goes both ways. Crime statistics can also be inflated by making things people already do illegal, eg the various facets of prohibiting different substances that people use.

There is so much petty crime that is no longer reported in France because people know the cops won't do anything about.

What's the point of reporting it if you know that nothing will come out of it? I had my car broken into, my phone stolen on the train, I have been harassed on public transport. Guess how many times the perpetrators were fined/convicted?

A big fat 0. And some of that stuff happened in areas with multiple "security" cameras who witnessed the whole thing.

We saw NYC and SF do this to disastrous effects. Journalists had to start looking at privately collected victimization rates to get an accurate picture since crime stats were clearly being juked.

I looked at France and Germany, there was a clear downward trend for a long time, yet it bumped before the pandemic, got super low for the 2-3 years of it, and is steadily rising again.

Comparatively they are still incredibly safe countries, and the sentiment of insecurity has always been disproportionate to reality and politically exploited.

But people feeling the social climate deteriorating is also spot on, the economy not doing great and rising inequalities is largely part of it so I don't think it will improve in the short term.

> Comparatively they are still incredibly safe countries, and the sentiment of insecurity has always been disproportionate to reality and politically exploited.

In 2005 France's domestic intelligence network, the Renseignements Generaux, identified 150 "no-go zones" around the country where police would not enter without reinforcements.

I am guessing, the sentiment of insecurity must be pretty strong in these areas if the cops don't even go there anymore.

Yes...but I'd argue these zones always existed [0] and aren't going to disappear anytime soon. That's where looking at how much the insecurity perception goes up or down can be more relevant that how many of these exist in total.

Slightly off-topic, but there are areas where cops are more in danger than the general public (visceral ACAB sentiment), and people from the higher spheres of society also won't set a foot there. These places will fit both profiles of "no-law" zone and being extremely peaceful and easy to live in.

[0] https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89meutes_dans_les_banlieue...

Crime stats are down in parts of America too, and it doesn’t mean a thing. Trust your eyes, not stats that can be gamed. These days a lot of crime stats are influenced by soft on crime laws, victims too jaded to report crimes, and more. The perception that crime is increasing is more right than wrong in my experience.

When my american kids are slagging my Belgian half brother he shuts them down by offering a visit to the school he went to, you know, through the unlocked non bulletproof front door. Their schools have vestibules with intercoms and such.

Compared to when? Compare 14/15 years ago to now... it is way worse.

Also, the way of counting has been manipulated in Spain at least to mask the data conveniently.

Since there us actually bo government above countries, yhe international stage is a practice of true anarchy.

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