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The murder that shook Iceland
- nopressure 9y ago>a country with one of the lowest murder rates in the world I wonder why...
- eafkuor 9y agoDo you have the answer?
- tehwebguy 9y agoWhy?
- ghaff 9y agoProbably the usual reasons. Homogeneity, social cohesion... These are probably not universally correlated with low crime but they certainly tend to be.
- JackFr 9y agoMostly irrelevant factoid - Lincoln, NE is reasonably close to Iceland in population, murder rate, gun ownership.
- narrator 9y agoHow do you measure social cohesion? Crime rate might be one way, but then you've got yourself a tautology.
- angersock 9y agoEconomic diversity, racial diversity, and religious diversity all spring to mind. EDIT: Downvotes? For this? I'm not claiming that lacking the diversity is a good thing, merely that having extra options decreases cohesion. The more diverse the economic situation is (say, due to vast wealth inequality) the less cohesion there is. The more diverse the religions are, the less common-ground people have based on religion--as in most of European history. The more racially diverse a place is, the more tensions due to race (LA versus Helsinki). Is it worth the hit to cohesion to have better diversity? I'd argue that, in the absence of external threats, it absolutely is. But living in a fantasyland where diversity doesn't come at the expense of cohesion doesn't help.
- tom_mellior 9y agoEconomic inequality perhaps? If you sort https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_equality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_eq... by "CIA Gini %" and skip the countries where there is no data in that column, then sort https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate_by_decade#2010s https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intention... by the "2010" column, then squint a bit at the top ten or twenty countries in each list, they look kinda correlated. (Or co-correlated with a whole bunch of other factors.)
- oxymoron 9y agoAccording to Stephen Pinker, the correlation between inequality and violence is weak. It really surprised me, because I always assumed that they’d be linked.
- tom_mellior 9y agoIf anything, as hinted above, there are lots of other confounding factors. Also, Wikipedia's wealth inequality list looks a lot less similar to murder rates than the income inequality list I posted above. Would you know off the top of your head if Pinker wrote about wealth or about income inequality? (Or yet another measure?)
- oxymoron 9y agoI looked it up, since I got downvoted (see sibling comment). Since he’s talking about the Gini coeffecient, I’d presume he’s referring to income inequality, although it’s not explicit.
- tom_mellior 9y agoRight, thanks for the quote. The Gini coefficent is applicable both to income and to wealth inequality, so that doesn't answer the question. (Not your fault, of course.)
- rhcom2 9y ago
- surfmike 9y agoWillingness to trust strangers. https://ourworldindata.org/trust https://ourworldindata.org/trust
- ghaff 9y agoYes. Social trust was probably actually the term I should have used, e.g. https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-02-23/you-can-t-have-denmark-without-danes https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-02-23/you-can-t... It seems to be somewhat inversely related to diversity but not entirely. As Megan has also written, Greece and Italy are also fairly homogeneous but don't have most of the social characteristics of the Nordics.
- surfmike 9y agoAnd Canada is very diverse but has relatively high trust.
- zeveb 9y ago> How do you measure social cohesion? It's the inverse of diversity. Economic inequality, religious, philosophical & cultural diversity — make a measure which combines all of those things, then invert it. It'd at least make a start.
- zukzuk 9y agoLooking at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intention..., I suspect it has more to do with average wealth / standard of living combined with wealth inequality. "Social cohesion", whatever that means, is probably correlated, but I wouldn't be sure it's the underlying cause.
- pedermoeller 9y agoSize of country plays a role. People in smaller communities know each other better which makes it harder to get away with murder.
- dirktheman 9y agoIceland only has about 300,000 inhabitants (the same as the city of Santa Ana, ca), and a lot of people are somehow related to each other. In fact, there's an Icelandic dating app that checks if the person you're interested in isn't related to you.
- nerdponx 9y agoSize of country and high, equitable standards of living.
- bbctol 9y agoNo large cities?
- blattimwind 9y agoHalf the country lives in the same city.
- neaden 9y agoWith a population of about 120,000 Reykjavik wouldn't meet most definitions for a large city though.
- EduardoBautista 9y agoThen how would you explain the safety of Swiss and Japanese cities?
- middleclick 9y agoThe fact that you made a new account to comment this indicates to me that I should not assume good faith because I know what you were hinting at: race.
- nopressure 9y agoYes but if I did say it like that it would've been flagged by now, instead of getting any kind of discussion or rebuttal about it, because that's how the hivemind works. I also don't understand why is it bad faith to say or imply that racial homogeinity leads to better cohesion and in turn more safety and equality. I guess I'll never know because any kind of discussion about that is shut off for some reason.
- PKop 9y agoBecause we are told and must believe despite contradictory evidence that diversity is always and in every way "our strength". Even though when discussing company hiring practices people switch their rhetoric to proclaim "our culture" is very important and we must keep our company's culture the same, bring on new people slowly as to preserve the culture etc, etc. Interesting cognitive dissonance.
- chrischen 9y agoIf you love using evidence then you should probably take a look at it once in a while. It’s no coincidence the economic powerhouses in the US are also the most diverse and progressive places in the US, and that the US is the economic center of the world. Diversity has nothing to do with losing culture. It’s about sharing cultures and understanding other cultures and points of view. Diversity is a fundamental requirement of all life, whether it’s cultural, racial, or cellular and genetic. In all cases diversity increases resilience, whether to new unaccounted for situations or new diseases.
- milankovic 9y ago> It’s no coincidence the economic powerhouses in the US are also the most diverse and progressive places in the US [..] Yeah, right. This has absolutely nothing to do with being 'diverse' and progressive. I don't know what you had in mind (SV?), but this all is caused by stuff that already happened decades ago. This is pretty well documented history. > [..] and that the US is the economic center of the world. Pride goeth before a fall.. And even now, this is only true if you assume certain constraints. For example, manufacturing? Not true anymore, ridiculous to even think that. The same with other domains of the economy, I'm not saying this to attack the US, because I actually love you guys, but you have to deal with some serious issues, because before you realize it you're not the center of the world of anything any longer. It can be awfully quick sometimes.
- dahart 9y agoThe article gave some reasons why. Do you disagree with them, or did you not read them? "With a small, mostly homogenous population of 340,000 and a high degree of economic equality, Iceland is one of the world’s safest nations. It is the only Nato member without a standing army. [...] Police are not armed [...] The feeling of security is bolstered by Icelanders’ tendency to look out for one another, a tradition that dates back to times when close collaboration was essential to make it through the long, brutal winters."
- jxub 9y agoIt's a good longform read about this charming (well not in that case) country.
- kkkaizer 9y agoTL:DR on how was she killed?
- cornholio 9y agoTwo danish sailors picked her up while drunk in a rental car, one of them got off to the ship and the other drove away with her and was not seen until the next morning when he returned the car with a large odometer reading. Her body was eventually found naked and battered in a distant location, and the rental had forensic sings of having been cleaned of her blood. The sailor was recorded buying cleaning products at the same time, his DNA was found on her discarded clothes and her driving license was found in his cabin on the ship (along with a few pounds of hashish). A truly disturbed individual that tried to pin the murder on his colleague up until the very end.
- kkkaizer 9y agoThanks buddy.
- libria 9y agoAlso, actual cause of death was drowning which removes some suspicion of involvement from the other sailor since the drowning likely took place much later and further away from his departure. Kudos to the captain for being very responsible and secretly turning the ship around on suspicion his men were involved.
- 21 9y agoThere was a plan B even if he didn't turn around, but yeah, he made it easier.
- milankovic 9y agoIf you don't mind, can you also give a TL:DR on why this appears on HN front page?
- starshadowx2 9y ago
- morley 9y agoInteresting that this appears on the front page at the same time as this story: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16828973 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16828973 I don't have a particular point of view either way other than to say that context matters, and pragmatism matters, and the solution to these potential problems can't be "remove all surveillance" any more than it can be "surveil everything."
- PantaloonFlames 9y agoIt's a long game, adding surveillance. Surely more surveillance would not have prevented this senseless murder. No one knows why it happened; it seems to have occurred without any reason. We can surmise momentary insanity or a drug-induced psychotic episode. The apparent perpetrator refuses to confess, so maybe he doesn't even remember how it happened, though obviously he remembers scrubbing the car. But CCTV footage wouldn't have stopped this madness. It would have helped find her body a little more quickly. In the long term, I guess surveillance would discourage violent crime, as the idea that "they'll see us, the police will catch us" gradually becomes well accepted among people who have the potential to commit crimes. This is probably already true in London, and maybe in other closely-surveilled capital cities. But even if everyone sane shares the knowledge that "they're watching us", psychotic actors will still do psychotic things.
- walshemj 9y agoSo how come in London (a LOT of cctv) which has just had a really heavy spike in murderers and Gun crime?
- boomboomsubban 9y agoCCTV has been in London for a long time now, and violent crime is still down from it's introduction. CCTV is not the only factor relevant to a murder rate, and a "spike" in the overall lower numbers should be an expected result.
- wjn0 9y agoIt is interesting that the article states that Iceland's conclusion from this case (and probably others) is "more surveillance." They don't mention if the autopsy revealed when during the course of these events the girl died. Would more surveillance have prevented her death? Or is the argument that it would serve as a deterrent? It seems remarkable that despite a perceived lack of sufficient surveillance, they have an extremely likely killer convicted, who if not guilty of murder, is most likely otherwise culpable for her death. He was caught on CCTV buying the cleaning equipment for the car, for example. Surely if CCTV is to serve as a deterrent, he would not be caught doing something so... obvious?
- meheleventyone 9y agoI live in Iceland perhaps no more than 200m away from where Birna got in the car. My understanding is that people feel more CCTV would have answered the question of what happened to her sooner. People were very shocked that someone could vanish from Laugavegur (if you’ve never visited, downtown Reykjavik doesn’t have a big city vibe) and there were substantial searches conducted through the downtown area. Were it not for some civic minded people coming across crucial evidence in an unlikely spot the red car involved may not have been identified at all. In short a lot of people empathise with the pain of their loved ones vanishing and not knowing why and in this case lack of CCTV almost played a part in that.
- arnarbi 9y ago(Just for context, I am Icelandic, but have no other connection to this story.) > They don't mention if the autopsy revealed when during the course of these events the girl died. It does, she drowned after she was put in the water. > It seems remarkable that despite a perceived lack of sufficient surveillance, they have an extremely likely killer convicted The point is that without that tiny bit of surveillance, it would have been extremely hard to get on the track that led to discovery of incriminating evidence. Without linking the red KIA to Polar Nanooq, it is possible that nothing would have come of it. The perpetrator had left the country with almost all the available evidence, and such a large search would likely not have been launched so her body might have never been discovered. It was by the skin of their teeth that the police managed to link the car in the first video to the boat. Had the first video been better (or more from the same area), they would have been able to identify the license plates right away. A second thing to realize is in Iceland, the arguments against surveillance haven't been "we don't want to be watched" nor "it will get abused" -- but rather "we don't need it". It is obvious why this case changed that sentiment.
- sdiq 9y agoWhile sad, I like their names though: Birna Brjánsdóttur, Birna Brjánn's daughter.
- c17r 9y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icelandic_name https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icelandic_name