5 ms·

> For example, I don't think Tokyo is particularly safer than a (walkable) US city on what do you base this opinion? I looked up a couple of crime stats sites

> For example, I don't think Tokyo is particularly safer than a (walkable) US city on what do you base this opinion? I looked up a couple of crime stats sites and the assault and murder rates per capita in the US are like, 10x higher in the US than in Japan.

seabird 4y ago
Average assault and murder rates are massively inflated by a handful of exceptional cities. St. Louis (usually highest murder rate in the US or close to it) is pushing 70 murders per 100k. That is roughly double the rate of Cleveland (rank 5). Cleveland has a murder rate over 10 times higher than a city of around ~40k people that I live fairly close to. However, another city (population ~45k) that is about a 20 minute drive away from the one I'm near has a murder rate over 15 times higher than the city I live near. Crime is experienced incredibly unevenly in the US. I won't say much more past that because it's where the politics starts to kick in and I don't think that will add anything to the conversation.
- jerkstate 4y ago
  based on rough calculation, your 40k city has a murder rate of 3.5 per 100,000; Tokyo has a murder rate of 0.26 per 100,000. In Miyazaki prefecture, the most violent in Japan according to [1], the murder rate is 0.9 per 100,000 [1] https://nbakki.hatenablog.com/entry/Murder_Rate_Number_of_Actual_Victims_by_Prefecture_in_Japan_2018 https://nbakki.hatenablog.com/entry/Murder_Rate_Number_of_Ac...
  - seabird 4y ago
    That 3.5 is almost without exception crime-related. Your odds of being a victim of extreme violence even if you weren't involved in what started it are effectively zero. Miyazaki prefecture probably experiences this same phenomenon. If even that is too much for you to risk, there's a city a couple of hours away with a population of 100k and a murder rate of 0.00. We haven't even mentioned the Japanese tendency to only prosecute slam dunk cases. The major point is that although Tokyo might be "safer" on paper, the risk profile of letting your kid walk around Tokyo vs. letting your kid walk around the city I mentioned is pretty much the same in practice, and this goes for thousands of American cities. There are millions of Americans who could let their kids walk around their community and not have to worry about them being murdered or seriously assaulted.
    - stadia42 4y ago
      You argue that most murders are criminals killing each other. Suppose you're right. So let's look at robberies instead. Those are primarily directed towards random people not towards other criminals. The safest US city in that respect is Irvine with ~20 per 100k (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_by_crime_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b...). Irvine is indeed a very safe city, and I doubt parents would be concerned too much with letting their kids walk to school (if only the school was within a walking distance away). Tokyo reported 224 robberies for 14m residents (https://knowledge.insight-lab.co.jp/tableau/opendata-crime-tokyo https://knowledge.insight-lab.co.jp/tableau/opendata-crime-t...), or ~1.6 per 100k. So 10 times less than Irvine, the place that everyone considers to be basically completely safe. Now move out of Irvine. Pick a city. San Francisco is ~360, NYC is ~160, Seattle is ~210. Even Mountain View, near Apple, Google, and many other high tech companies is ~60. And btw, people in Tokyo generally do very little protect themselves from violent crime, since it's so rare. They walk around late, alone, often drunk, paying no attention to their surroundings. I'm pretty sure if people behaved like that in SF, the robbery rate would jump significantly.
flakiness 4y ago
Huh. I should've done some research first. Thanks for the catch! It was based on my personal experience but looking at [1], I realized that I'm in the one of the safest county in the US. The murder rate is very comparable (2x) to Tokyo here. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_by_crime_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b...

seabird 4y ago

Average assault and murder rates are massively inflated by a handful of exceptional cities. St. Louis (usually highest murder rate in the US or close to it) is pushing 70 murders per 100k. That is roughly double the rate of Cleveland (rank 5). Cleveland has a murder rate over 10 times higher than a city of around ~40k people that I live fairly close to. However, another city (population ~45k) that is about a 20 minute drive away from the one I'm near has a murder rate over 15 times higher than the city I live near. Crime is experienced incredibly unevenly in the US. I won't say much more past that because it's where the politics starts to kick in and I don't think that will add anything to the conversation.

jerkstate 4y ago
based on rough calculation, your 40k city has a murder rate of 3.5 per 100,000; Tokyo has a murder rate of 0.26 per 100,000. In Miyazaki prefecture, the most violent in Japan according to [1], the murder rate is 0.9 per 100,000 [1] https://nbakki.hatenablog.com/entry/Murder_Rate_Number_of_Actual_Victims_by_Prefecture_in_Japan_2018 https://nbakki.hatenablog.com/entry/Murder_Rate_Number_of_Ac...
- seabird 4y ago
  That 3.5 is almost without exception crime-related. Your odds of being a victim of extreme violence even if you weren't involved in what started it are effectively zero. Miyazaki prefecture probably experiences this same phenomenon. If even that is too much for you to risk, there's a city a couple of hours away with a population of 100k and a murder rate of 0.00. We haven't even mentioned the Japanese tendency to only prosecute slam dunk cases. The major point is that although Tokyo might be "safer" on paper, the risk profile of letting your kid walk around Tokyo vs. letting your kid walk around the city I mentioned is pretty much the same in practice, and this goes for thousands of American cities. There are millions of Americans who could let their kids walk around their community and not have to worry about them being murdered or seriously assaulted.
  - stadia42 4y ago
    You argue that most murders are criminals killing each other. Suppose you're right. So let's look at robberies instead. Those are primarily directed towards random people not towards other criminals. The safest US city in that respect is Irvine with ~20 per 100k (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_by_crime_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b...). Irvine is indeed a very safe city, and I doubt parents would be concerned too much with letting their kids walk to school (if only the school was within a walking distance away). Tokyo reported 224 robberies for 14m residents (https://knowledge.insight-lab.co.jp/tableau/opendata-crime-tokyo https://knowledge.insight-lab.co.jp/tableau/opendata-crime-t...), or ~1.6 per 100k. So 10 times less than Irvine, the place that everyone considers to be basically completely safe. Now move out of Irvine. Pick a city. San Francisco is ~360, NYC is ~160, Seattle is ~210. Even Mountain View, near Apple, Google, and many other high tech companies is ~60. And btw, people in Tokyo generally do very little protect themselves from violent crime, since it's so rare. They walk around late, alone, often drunk, paying no attention to their surroundings. I'm pretty sure if people behaved like that in SF, the robbery rate would jump significantly.

flakiness 4y ago

Huh. I should've done some research first. Thanks for the catch! It was based on my personal experience but looking at [1], I realized that I'm in the one of the safest county in the US. The murder rate is very comparable (2x) to Tokyo here. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_by_crime_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b...