
Falling Crime: Where have all the burglars gone? - thejteam
http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21582041-rich-world-seeing-less-and-less-crime-even-face-high-unemployment-and-economic
======
rwhitman
I don't think enough emphasis is put in these studies on the rise of cheap
entertainment for bored male youth. Teenage boys that normally would have been
running around in the streets committing entry level crimes are now glued to
their Xbox. The declines in crime also happen to correlate with the
ubiquitousness and availability of video games. As they get cheaper and more
violent, crime goes down.

Sure policing has gotten better, and crime prevention tech has advanced, but
these studies tend to ignore the fact that would-be criminals rarely leave the
house anymore...

~~~
petercooper
_Teenage boys that normally would have been running around in the streets
committing entry level crimes are now glued to their Xbox. The declines in
crime also happen to correlate with the ubiquitousness and availability of
video games. As they get cheaper and more violent, crime goes down._

I really like your argument but I remember how ubiquitous the SNES, Sega
Genesis and PS1 were in the 90s. I do wonder what role the quality of graphics
plays here too (especially with regards to portraying violence).

Games in the 90s did cost more than AAA titles today but not by a huge amount
and the hardware was similarly priced. Maybe it just took a couple more
decades for gaming to be considered a truly mainstream activity rather than
something for the geekier kids.

~~~
pekk
> I remember how ubiquitous the SNES, Sega Genesis and PS1 were in the 90s

They weren't "ubiquitous" for poor kids. For those kids, there was no way they
would get their parents to buy us anything for (the 1991 equivalent of) $350
and $85/game.

Nobody assumed that upper middle class kids were normally carrying out
burglaries...

~~~
bluedino
The poor kids had Nintendo and Sega back then, just like the poor kids have
Xbox and PlayStation today.

~~~
gcb0
Maybe in middle class usa. Other places had very high import taxes for
electronics.

Ps1 was actually 100x more common than sega/nintendo in my 3rd world childhood
because it was almost free to get games.

For the price of a cartridge rental for two days you could get a pirate cd.

------
tmorton
This article mentions, but undersells, the lead factor. Lead exposure causes
cognitive problems in children, especially related to impulse control. The
drop in crime correlates very well with lead cleanup.

Kevin Drum (a left-leaning US journalist) has been making this argument:
[http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2013/01/lead-and-
crime...](http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2013/01/lead-and-crime-
linkfest)

~~~
coryrc
Small planes still run leaded fuels so the (rich) owners can save money not
changing their engines. This is 50% of our current exposure, needlessly!

[http://www.treehugger.com/aviation/leaded-gas-banned-
around-...](http://www.treehugger.com/aviation/leaded-gas-banned-around-globe-
except-small-airplanes.html)

~~~
cpncrunch
I fly planes, and I haven't met a rich owner yet. The typical cessna 150/172
costs less than a new SUV. The rich owners tend to fly kerosene burners.

Also, most small-engine planes can already burn regular unleaded autogas. It's
just the high-compression engines that require the lead. The FAA, AOPA and
others are working on developing alternatives, but it takes time. Perhaps they
should have done this sooner.

~~~
PhasmaFelis
"Rich" is a pretty flexible yardstick. Somebody who can afford to drop the
price of a new car on a hobby item is rich compared to most Americans. I
recall a thing a while back about how hardly anyone in America will admit to
being rich, because they all measure themselves against someone even richer.
"Sure, I have three houses and a yacht, but I'm not _rich!_ It's not like I
can afford a private island!"

Your points about engines and fuel make sense, though.

~~~
cpncrunch
Well I'm pretty sure I'm less rich than Cory if he is a MS employee.

I pay about $85/hour to fly and don't own a plane. If I lived in the USA it
would be $68/hr due to lower gas prices. I think the majority of Americans can
afford to spend $68/month on their hobby (assuming they flew once a month).

~~~
mpyne
There are high school students who drop _thousands_ of $$$ into their hobbies.
My hobby (computers and video games) was cheap in comparison to those getting
tuned-up small cars as made famous in movies and racing games. $68/hr is a
fairly inexpensive hobby indeed.

~~~
kamarupa
$68 an hour is not an inexpensive hobby by any objective measurement.

I also have to wonder where high-school students who drop thousands of dollars
into their hobbies are getting their money from. Parents?

~~~
mpyne
> I also have to wonder where high-school students who drop thousands of
> dollars into their hobbies are getting their money from. Parents?

I often wondered the same thing, given that neither I nor my parents had
anywhere near that much money to fritter away.

I think it comes down to parents directly or indirectly though. You can make a
fair amount of money with a summer job and part-time job the rest of the year,
when you don't have to pay for rent, food, etc.

It becomes harder to maintain a hobby once you have to move out and live on
your own.

~~~
mc32
Depends on the age. I know when I was a teenager, I worked since I was allowed
to (16). So, part time jobs, summer jobs and saving --that's where teenagers
get the extra money. It's relatively easy to save money when you don't have to
pay for room and board, as it were.

------
drcode
I think the reasons for this are: (1) People buy fewer used items in physical
stores, i.e. fewer people buy stuff at pawn shops etc and a typical thief will
never go through the effort of building up a decent eBay seller reputation.
This makes it harder to monetize stolen property. (2) It's a self-perpetuating
statistic, in that less crime means more resources/attention is given to the
remaining crime (by the police and by the vigilance of citizens) which leads
to even lower crime.

~~~
thejteam
And, expanding on this, people carry less cash both on their person and in
their homes.

~~~
marknutter
Yeah, but they carry $500 smartphones with them now instead.

~~~
drcode
Right, but how much would you get for that smartphone if you brought it to a
pawn shop? Assuming you properly reset its data and convince the pawn shop
owner it isn't stolen I bet you could get $30 at most.

(And if the phone is locked down and the thief can't jailbreak it it
essentially has a value $0)

~~~
jseliger
On the other hand, you could probably make a lot selling on Craigslist.

I've been selling my family's old phones and computers for years, and the
market is robust. Not $500 robust, but two-year-old iPhones go for about $200
(which, probably not coincidentally, is the upgrade price for a new phone).

~~~
csomar
I guess it's much harder to sell a phone without its charger and box. I'd
suspect that the property is stolen.

Please anyone buying old phones/property ask for the purchase invoice. It's
possible that it's a stolen property and you can get in trouble later.

------
moron4hire
I think historians will look back at the early 21st century and note that Soma
was best served digitally, rather than chemically.

~~~
pitt1980
what does this mean?

what is Soma?

~~~
jrwoodruff
Reference to 'Brave New World.' From Wikipedia:

...Soma is a hallucinogen that takes users on enjoyable, hangover-free
"holidays". It was developed by the World State to provide these inner-
directed personal experiences within a socially managed context of State-run
'religious' organizations; social clubs.

------
adventured
My first thought is pure economics. 1990 or so forward saw a massive increase
in the standard of living globally on average. US GDP almost doubled over that
decade, and I suspect the same is true for most of the industrialized world.
So why isn't crime rising now, with big financial and unemployment problems?
The countries with those problems are still consuming their past wealth to pay
for current entitlements, which is keeping the social contract alive
temporarily. And if that theory is correct, the next 10 to 15 years will see a
meaningful increase in crime.

Another thought - just a half-silly toss out, but perhaps the Web played a
role. It changed a lot of social behaviors, and that would have _began_ in the
early to mid 1990s in the industrialized world. It altered how and where
people spend their time; how they do their shopping; how they communicate; how
often they leave their homes; knowledge available when it comes to almost
everything, such as instantly being able to look-up good / bad neighborhoods
based on crime.

I first got online around 1994/95, at 14 years of age, and it's almost hard to
remember time before the Web. I have to consciously remind myself that it
wasn't always there.

------
liquidcool
Since this piece mentions burglary in specific, I found it thriving in
Southern California (OC), but in a very specific fashion. Very careful
criminals are using the following M.O.:

\- Parking garages with no cameras

\- Security is part time, and they wait until they're gone

\- They hit only cars that are unlocked, so no breaking, just entering

\- Occasionally, if they see a big score like a laptop, they will break a
window, but probably as their last act before getaway.

\- They hit a building only once every few months, when people have let down
their guard again.

I'd never heard of this until I was a victim, and the police told me the were
aware of it but couldn't catch them. Then I asked around and they've hit
buildings in several cities. Simply remembering to lock your door and leave
nothing obvious on your seats will protect you.

I bring this up because although the crimes are reported to the police, I
wonder how much they are reflected in statistics like these.

~~~
lifeformed
What are people leaving in their cars that are worth taking?

~~~
kevincrane
Laptops and cameras are the two things that would jump out to me. It should be
obvious to you or me that you'd bring those inside for the night, but a lot of
people don't out of convenience (some members of my family are/were guilty of
this). Or maybe it's a work laptop and you just have no need for it inside.

------
danso
A little OT, but related to current events: Detroit, which has been facing
fiscal problems, has enjoyed a drop in crime even though budget deficits has
forced the city to cut hundreds of officers:

[http://news.yahoo.com/detroit-crime-down-murder-
rate-1736002...](http://news.yahoo.com/detroit-crime-down-murder-
rate-173600203.html)

And yet the murder rate is relatively stagnant, and this year reached a peak:
[http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/01/04/16352612-weve-
los...](http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/01/04/16352612-weve-lost-respect-
for-life-detroit-records-deadliest-year-in-decades?lite)

How to reconcile these things? Is crime really falling, or have reporting
standards changed? Or, if cops can't respond to reports, do the reports ever
get filed?

~~~
roc
> _" How to reconcile these things?"_

1\. 'urban lead' is a studied off-shoot of the lead hypothesis. Detroit's lead
situation is a studied and known problem. So lingering crime in Detroit is
actually expected under the lead hypothesis. Particularly as the population
shrinks and the remaining citizen 'average' shifts poorer, with a more-toxic
environment.

2\. 'structural' crime. Opportunists considering theft as a means to an end
might be dissuaded as the risk/reward equation shifts. But convincing a (drug)
gang that it's no longer a good idea to murder a rat/rival is much more
difficult.

3\. Detroit's shrinking police coverage. The police department has explicitly
warned people away from certain areas of the city, because they don't have the
resources to provide effective coverage. This can only be interpreted as an
'opportunity' for structural crime.

[http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/10/08/14294269-visit-
de...](http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/10/08/14294269-visit-detroit-at-
your-own-risk-police-union-warns?lite)

------
DanI-S
There's no mention of the rise of the welfare state. I'd be surprised if the
presence of an economic safety net didn't have an impact on people's
willingness to commit crime.

In the end, I'm sure the answer is a combination of all these factors. As
individuals and as a species, we get better at living as time goes on.

~~~
marknutter
If it's true that welfare makes it less likely for someone to commit a crime
then wouldn't that also mean it makes them less likely to get a job?

~~~
DanI-S
Absolutely. In fact, many welfare schemes are designed to encourage young
people to stay in education rather than dropping out early to work.

In any case: since poor, unemployed young men commit crime, and we're never
going to see 100% employment, lifting them out of poverty will reduce the
impact of crime on everyone else. Intolerable for Ayn Rand; pragmatic for the
rest of us.

~~~
lmickh
Poverty rates have actually increased since the introduction of welfare and
welfare reform in the US. Long term stability of your proposal aside (see the
jump in Disability dependencies that followed the welfare reform), it doesn't
match the data that shows a drop in crime over the same time period.

~~~
spamizbad
Has it really? It dropped significantly in the 60s and 70s. Following that
period, it tended to track economic trends (Poverty goes up during recession,
comes back down during the good times)

Source:
[http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2012/07/11/p...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2012/07/11/poverty-
in-the-50-years-since-the-other-america-in-five-charts/)

------
RyanMcGreal
If you haven't read it, Steven Pinker's _The Better Angels of Our Nature_ is a
tour-de-force on the factors that have reduced violence of all kinds.

~~~
casca
While I do support some of Pinker's arguments, there are objections to many of
his assertions. This piece is a good, well referenced academic challenge:
[http://www.zcommunications.org/steven-pinker-on-the-
alleged-...](http://www.zcommunications.org/steven-pinker-on-the-alleged-
decline-of-violence-by-edward-s-herman-and-david-peterson)

~~~
RyanMcGreal
The linked article mainly answers Pinker's data with anecdotes and US-hating
(however justifiable). Notwithstanding Herman and Peterson's radical critique
of Pinker's Enlightenment liberalism and some quibbles about selecting
preferential methods of evaluation for casualty counts, they completely ignore
the fact that Pinker's data analysis actually encompasses their outraged
counterexamples.

That is, everything Herman and Peterson say about US postwar military
adventures is more or less correct, but that doesn't undermine Pinker's
argument that overall rates of violence have been in steady decline for
centuries. Neither high levels of civilian casualties nor military
industrialism nor mercantilism nor imperialism nor ideological conflict nor
genocide nor civil war were inventions of the 20th century - an in all cases,
their overall global trajectory has been downward.

With respect to WWI and WWII, Pinker goes to a great deal of trouble to
explain and justify his argument that they represent outliers - trouble Herman
and Peterson dismiss with dripping sarcasm but no counter-arguments.

Sidenote: there are only 8 footnotes, of which one is a note that the essay
was first published elsewhere. The only references to critiques of Pinker's
book (rather than general references to studies on particular wars or American
militarism) are a few references to critiques of Pinker's assertion that pre-
civilization nomads lived violent lives. One reference refers to
anthropologist Douglas P. Fry, but while Fry takes issue with Pinker's case
for rates of violence in pre-civilization societies, he does not disagree with
Pinker's main thesis: "Pinker’s basic claim is itself largely on target:
Physical violence has been decreasing over recent millennia."

------
codex
I wonder if easier access to contraception, pornography and abortion have
decreased the number of youth without access to opportunity and/or
supervision.

~~~
VLM
heritability either biologically or by culture of crime?

Anyone with a genetic/cultural predisposition to addiction died as a crack
addict in 1980-something, therefore no kids with the same predisposition alive
in 2013? Don't have to be dead, just a reproductive failure. No kids, kids
taken away, life in prison, etc.

Another interpretation is most crime is done by young urban males. A recent-
ish development is the Daddy-figure has basically disappeared from the lives
of those people, criminal or non-criminal alike. Therefore no following in
Dad's footsteps if you have no idea who or what a Dad is. Which is too bad
when Dad's not a dirtbag, but if he is, its probably a net positive.

Lack of employement opportunities, especially among the most disadvantaged,
means the most disadvantaged kids are no longer latchkey kids?

------
SCAQTony
I live in "Lost Angeles" and former police chief Bill Bratton took credit for
any statistic he could. It's my belief that the reason for crime reduction
here in L.A. is that the standard of living has gone up via social services
and drugs as a income vehicle are more ubiquitous. (See the first 60-seconds
of the intro to the film "Layer Cake" where the bank robbers realize they "are
in the wrong game..."
[http://youtu.be/QHKI8zMHCjE](http://youtu.be/QHKI8zMHCjE) )

Then there is credit card fraud too which is non-violent. In other words info
and contraband crimes.

------
briancurtin
> In Chicago, where crime has been slower to fall than elsewhere, local
> politicians this year thanked hotspot methods for the lowest murder rate in
> half a century.

What year are they talking about? 2012 was the highest in something like 10
years, and 2013 is on pace with 2011.

------
djdj123
Living in a bay area city with a recent alarming increase in armed robbery due
to a shrinking police force (guess which one), I would suggest that crime,
like real estate, is local, local, local. Perhaps Times Square and Talinn are
safer than before, but the negative dividends of the crack epidemic, the rise
of gangs and guns and glorification of criminal culture, the lack of parenting
in at risk communities, and the collapse of municipal finances since 2008 has
left cities like mine in the US with soaring violent crime rates.

------
EGreg
There is a simple reason: computers and the internet. It makes people more
docile and satisfies their urges. Porn for sexual urges, social media for
"socializing", google and wikipedia for knowledge etc. That last part also
makes everyone more educated. Which also correlates to less (blue collar)
crime.

~~~
RyanMcGreal
Simple and likely wrong. Violent crime started falling in the early 1990s,
before the internet had much of any penetration outside academia.

~~~
EGreg
You're talking about only the USA. Actually, violent crime spiked in late 80s
and then was coming down from that spike in the 90s, so there's that
confounding factor. Most of the crime in the late 80s was juvenile crime in
fact. It might have had to do with the culture of the time (inner city gangs,
etc.)

A better way would be to compare what people focus on / use on a daily basis
today vs in the 80s. If you are restless today you can pacify yourself with a
mobile phone. In fact it's an addiction that gives you a boost of dopamine.
And the virtual world is much less .... physical and violent, which reduces
people's tendencies over time.

Another great pacifier of the 20th century is consumerism. Feel bad? Buy an
ikea, veg out in front of the TV. There is a great documentary about how the
PR industry was invented and Freud's theories about the "collective ego"

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cW_rIdd69W8](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cW_rIdd69W8)

~~~
RyanMcGreal
I'm talking across the industrialized world. The availability of the internet
and other 'pacification networks' may be a contributing factor but it's
clearly not the driving force.

~~~
vacri
It could still be the main driving force, and it just so happened that an
associated force or two started a little earlier.

~~~
RyanMcGreal
But violence has been declining steadily for the past 400 years. Something
other than the internet must be behind that.

~~~
EGreg
No, it was all the internet! :)

But seriously ... I think that, although before it was not the internet, now
the internet has accelerated it.

------
anovikov
As a Marxist, i see an explanation of this in that the crime thrives in
societies numerically dominated by proletariat: people who have nothing to
lose are easily motivated into crime, much easier their children with no view
of the future. When the proletariat declined in numbers, so did the crime.

~~~
CapitalistCartr
You may well be right. Then comes that big step from Hypothesis to Theory.
Lots of research, boring work digging through white papers, reading old
journals, constructing tests, requesting funding, and finally analyzing
results. That is why hypotheses are like opinions, everyone has one, but real,
hard data is respected.

“What are the facts? Again and again and again--what are the facts? Shun
wishful thinking, ignore divine revelation, forget what "the stars foretell,"
avoid opinion, care not what the neighbors think, never mind the unguessable
"verdict of history"\--what are the facts, and to how many decimal places? You
pilot always into an unknown future; facts are your single clue. Get the
facts!"

Heinlein

~~~
ottoparts
"In the land of truth the man with one fact is king"

Linton Barwick

------
ackfoo
Manufacturing was outsourced to China starting in the 1990s, resulting in a
flood of cheap consumer goods. Inexpensive labour means artificially low
prices, which means in turn that most consumer goods are not worth repairing
because the cost to repair them with North American or European labour is
prohibitively expensive. It is cheaper to replace the item if it breaks.

This has led to a decline in two professions: electronics/appliance repair and
thievery. Just as it doesn't make sense to repair most consumer goods, it
doesn't make sense to steal them, either.

The street price of stolen goods is a tiny fraction of the new or even the
used goods price. When new prices are so low, the miniscule price of stolen
goods means that it is not worth the risk of getting caught stealing.

The decline in domestic manufacturing may also have a bearing on other crime
rates. Depression and hopelessness in a population, paradoxically, do not
necessarily lead to increased violence.

Look at any enslaved population; the first job of the keepers is always to
create hopelessness, so that the population is easier to control.

Violence declines in any enslaved population--at least, violence against the
keepers. And violent crime among the enslaved is rarely reported, partly
because the keepers don't care and partly because the enslaved do not trust
the keepers.

Criminals have either become anergic or else they have switched to confidence
scams like organized religion. Religion, unfortunately, does not get reported
as a crime.

Edit:sp.

------
xradionut
Here's another factor to consider: Sometimes crime is under reported or
covered up or not acted on.

I've known of property and other crimes that did not show up in the
statistics/annual reports of a particular city. The city in question was/is
known for low crime and used that as a selling up point to attract businesses
and home buyers. I'd be surprised if this was the only municipality that
"fudged" their numbers.

~~~
bluedino
> Sometimes crime is under reported or covered up or not acted on.

This could not be more true where I live, and with police departments
shrinking nationwide, I would guess that it's true in other places as well.

Plenty of people are still getting their back doors kicked down while at work,
and come home to find their laptops and consoles, and television missing.

You call the police, and they'll show up 4 hours later, and all they really do
is put your name on a list. It's basically up to you to go around and search
pawn shops and craigslist to find your stuff.

Most people don't even bother to call the cops, and don't bother filing an
insurance claim since an LCD TV is $450 and the insurance deductible is $1500,
not to mention the rise in rates or risk of getting your coverage dropped.

 _Reported_ crime is down. That's about it.

------
dschiptsov
You like it or not, but the famous "Broken Windows" and bandwagon effects are
in play.

Crime falling in some places just because being dumb looter or thief is less
respectable than being "easy" credit consumption bunny. Why should you try to
knock down a drunk for a smartphone, or press some fast-food stall for money
while you can drive a cheap new Korean car "brought" without even first
payment.

But in places like Russia even this doesn't work. These miserable rednecks
will never learn (being uneducated and unemployed have no access to A-class
credit) and because they are the wast majority, anyone who is trying to lead
modern consumption lifestyle are regarded as a peacock or even gay.

And, of course, being a low-level criminal is inferior comparing to a
"successful" corrupted official of any kind, driving $100k cars on the very
same streets. It is very common in Russia to see people who live in a
miserable soviet time panel housing blocks, but having a luxury car in a
parking lot.

So, street crime falls with easy credit, but this is only temporarily. Any
severe economic disturbance and you will have it all back on the streets.

------
michaelwww
Crime has gone white collar. The march of progress goes on.

------
Tichy
I have no absolute numbers, but in recent years I have heard far more about
attempted burglaries than in the decades before (in Germany). It sounds to me
as if the burglars are mostly professionals, driving with trucks into suburbs
to find empty houses.

On the other hand I also wonder what is there even left to steal. Apple might
singlehandedly sustain burglaries because their gear is the only stuff worth
stealing these days?

Then again an acquaintance told me when her flat was burglared the thieves
took everything, including photographs and files. I suppose there might be
villages somewhere in eastern countries dedicated to scanning those files for
bank account information.

------
oleganza
All the robbery nowadays happens in the central banks and is called "QE".

------
superflit
The burglars went to the internet. Low exposure to police and easier ways to
attract victims. (scams, rip off schemes, ponzi)

~~~
bubbleRefuge
Yeah, to generalize, IMHO, a big part of this is there has been a move from
blue collar to white collar crimes. Having grown up in South Florida myself,
certainly there is anecdotal evidence of that. South Florida leads the nation
in medicare fraud reaching possibly into the billions. Mortgage fraud was
another linchpin during the financial crisis. There are tons of call centers
in the area full of drug addicts who peddle every sort of scam you can think
of to the gullible types in flyover country : automobile warranties, gold ,
carbon credits, home warranties. The latest craze is tax return fraud.

Here's an old article about medicare fraud:
[http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/10/23/60minutes/main5414...](http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/10/23/60minutes/main5414390.shtml)
"They've figured out that rather than stealing $100,000 or $200,000, they can
steal $100 million. We have seen cases in the last six, eight months that
involve a couple of guys that if they weren't stealing from Medicare might be
stealing your car," Ogrosky explained."

------
brador
It's more profitable, with less risk, to steal cellphones by
mugging/pickpocketing/grab and running. One job can net an easy $200. Six a
night and you're rolling in Benjamins.

------
gummify
I'm pretty sure I saw a documentary recently about the increase in juvenile
crime and the increasing occupancy rates in jails. Also, what about biological
disposition and hormonal influence?

------
bluedino
Wait - I thought New York city's crime rate actually _rose_ 4 percent because
of all the iPhone thefts?

[http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2212093/Spike-
iPhone...](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2212093/Spike-iPhone-
robberies-causes-New-York-crime-rate-rise.html)

~~~
desas
The daily mail is not a reputable source for anything.

------
dangayle
They've all moved to Spokane, Wa and become real estate agents or car thieves

------
doctorstupid
_Virtue to them is that which makes modest and tame: with that they have
turned the wolf into a dog and man himself into man 's best domestic animal._
\- Nietzsche

------
hardwaresofton
The financial sector

~~~
abfan1127
Congress! Sorry, had to say it... nobody else had!

------
tsax
At least one was at my apartment. Macbook Pro =(

~~~
wahjah
:(

Hopefully you had everything backed up somewhere.

~~~
tsax
Not everything, but most of the important stuff was backed up I think.
Probably lost a bunch of pictures though.

------
sumodds
Wallstreet ;)

------
sjg007
Online.

------
rqfowler
Jail

------
pawrvx
Welfare.

------
seivan
Sweden.

------
Yourfags
I think the simple answer a lot of these comments are pointing to is:
civilization, wealth, progress, whatever you want to call it, but more and
more people are aware of how nice life can be and also see that it doesn't
really appear without hard work, course this is merely a hypothesis, but I
think it's a pretty common sentiment in the first world that hard work creates
an easier life.

------
jhprks
This is a worrying news indeed. Decreasing in crime in general can lead to
letting our guards down. Less demand in security systems and personal
firearms. The police and the federal security agencies may experience decline
in applicants. It is wiser to have more bad people in the society doing bad
things, so that the good people can defend themselves. The government should
do something about this, sigh...

