11 ms·

I come from Ciudad Juarez. Between 2008-2011, the city was the murder capital in the world and basically unlivable. My brother and I were no longer living ther

I come from Ciudad Juarez. Between 2008-2011, the city was the murder capital in the world and basically unlivable. My brother and I were no longer living there because we were in college. My parents decided to send my sister, then starting highschool, to a city in central Mexico with friends of the family to avoid having her grow up in what was a life and death environment. My parents stayed. Mexicans speak a lot about cartel wars and the violence it comes with. What is not often mentioned is that what _really_ kills the city and society is the unorganized crime that pops up when laws are not applied. The cartel wars laid bare that the police was not going to prosecute anything in fear of retaliation. This opened the door to anyone to commit any sort of crime. Carjacking was increasingly common. My uncle fled one such attempt and miraculously escaped to the US unharmed but with his truck showered with bullets. My mother saw a guy getting shot in the streets just because of road rage. Friends had their parents killed or kidnapped. Every crime that goes unprosecuted is an invitation for a repeat crime. This is as true in Juarez as it is in San Francisco. The most basic definition and purpose of the state is to hold the monopoly of violence. It must jealously protect this. The alternative is unsustainable anarchy followed by someone else filling that void. San Francisco has been ceding its monopoly of violence for years if not decades.

sizzle 4y ago
Broken windows theory https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_windows_theory https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_windows_theory
- AverageDude 4y ago
  They applied that in my suburb and media kept comparing it with racism. They stopped doing that from last year and car jacking and other violent crime is on the rise again. I could never understand how “Broken Window” is racist? And I am a minority. Whatever the fix for institutional racism is need not be contradictory to Broken Window. They can work together.
  - Pxtl 4y ago
    Because "broken window" is too often taken to mean "come down hard on loiterers, grafitti vandals, people who lack the money to maintain property standards, etc"... instead of focusing on violent crime. Now obviously there's a real debate to be had about how severely petty theft and vandalism should be punished. I mean, George Floyd was killed over a counterfeit bill. But once you get into violent crime everybody is on the same page. But basically, in order to get all the violent crime under control, you need a hefty police force. And a hefty police force means a lot of cops roving around hassling poor people and people of color who are just trying to live their lives, which is what the left-wing activists get angry about. Figuring out how to get effective policing without intrinsic racism/classism that always seems to come with that is a big challenge.
    - bart_spoon 4y ago
      > Because "broken window" is too often taken to mean "come down hard on loiterers, grafitti vandals, people who lack the money to maintain property standards, etc"... instead of focusing on violent crime. The broken windows theory isn’t about violent crime, it’s literally about property crime and offenses like vandalism. The idea is that when that kind of petty crime goes unchecked, the crime situation in the area spirals, both in terms of quantity and severity, eventually leading to more violent crime. You can disagree with the theory all you want, but to assert that the issue is that it should only apply to violent crime is to fundamentally misunderstand the assertion the theory is making.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
      - sirmarksalot 4y ago
        I thought the issue was that "broken windows" was used as a metaphor for all low-level infractions, and not literally interpreted as "fix the windows and clean up the graffiti" as the studies recommended. This then got implemented as quotas on police departments, leading to opportunistic, biased policing and the de facto criminalization of poverty. As a result, the term "broken windows" now carries a ton of baggage, and is sometimes used as a racist dog whistle.
- komali2 4y ago
  Is probably a fallacy of correlation being tied to causation. > The policy targeted people in areas with a significant amount of physical disorder and there appeared to be a causal relationship between the adoption of broken windows policing and the decrease in crime rate. Sridhar, however, discusses other trends (such as New York City's economic boom in the late 1990s) that created a "perfect storm" that contributed to the decrease of crime rate much more significantly than the application of the broken windows policy. Sridhar also compares this decrease of crime rate with other major cities that adopted other various policies and determined that the broken windows policy is not as effective. > In a 2007 study called "Reefer Madness" in the journal Criminology and Public Policy, Harcourt and Ludwig found further evidence confirming that mean reversion fully explained the changes in crime rates in the different precincts in New York in the 1990s.[38] Further alternative explanations that have been put forward include the waning of the crack epidemic,[39] unrelated growth in the prison population by the Rockefeller drug laws,[39] and that the number of males from 16 to 24 was dropping regardless of the shape of the US population pyramid. As always, the wikipedia article is a good place to start to look into further sources: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_windows_theory https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_windows_theory It's time to let "broken window theory," and bloodthirsty, punitive "justice" strategies, die.
  - uejfiweun 4y ago
    I dunno man - to be honest, nowadays it seems you can find a study to back up any side of the debate, especially with highly politicized issues like this. I'm certain that there are studies out there showing that broken windows policing was in fact the main contributor to the decrease in crime.
    - komali2 4y ago
      > to be honest, nowadays it seems you can find a study to back up any side of the debate, especially with highly politicized issues like this Perhaps this is true, and perhaps this is a part of the issue the usa has with "different facts for both sides." > I'm certain that there are studies out there showing that broken windows policing was in fact the main contributor to the decrease in crime. I'm going to challenge you on this because I feel like this basically just contributes to the problem. Think about what you wrote, you're "certain," certain that studies exist showing our that broken windows policing works, and thus you believe it works. You arrived at a conclusion of the world with, genuinely, no evidence. You don't even know if the evidence exists! In fact you arrived at two conclusions: that your conclusion is correct, and that a lot of other people proved this with good studies. Now I challenge you to simply read the wikipedia article on the subject in its entirety and pay close attention to the "criticism" section. I've done this because I care deeply about the issue, and I've also read the various studies linked. For me, I found the "for broken policing" studies to be dubious and problematic, and the criticisms to be valid. As a result, my understanding of the world is that broken window policing doesn't work, the basic theory is a misunderstanding of actual mechanisms, and that the application of broken windows policing pulls resources from more effective solutions while also delivering inequitable justice to society. So, when you're read up as well, do you still disagree with me?
johntiger1 4y ago
Thank you for sharing your personal perspective. As a fellow immigrant, have nothing to say except that I totally agree. Many of us come from countries with less than great rule of law, and the entire reason me and my parents came here is for a better life where laws are fairly and equally enforced. That means that if you work hard - you get to enjoy the fruits of your labor.
- AverageDude 4y ago
  That sums up so well. Saving this.
- atonse 4y ago
  As an immigrant I also agree with this. I think it is mainly immigrants that appreciate how much better things are in the US. Sure they aren’t perfect but law enforcement had m worked extremely well here compared to many of the countries we’ve come From. And in chasing some form of utopian perfection we have thrown off the balance of something that worked quite well in favor of declining standards and opened the door to more crime, which affects the same people we were trying to protect in the first place.
colpabar 4y ago
So what would you say to the argument that the police are already too violent, and that too many people already get put in jail, especially minorities? That is the motivation behind the progressive policies of not prosecuting criminals. Every person not prosecuted is one less crime statistic; bonus points if that person-kept-out-of-jail is a minority. I want to be absolutely clear - I am in no way suggesting minorities are genetically inclined to be criminals or asking you to speak for all minorities or anything like that. I'm just curious, given your views and your background, what you think when you hear politicians claim that they are fighting inequality by not prosecuting criminals.
- huevosabio 4y ago
  I think the police is very violent in the US in big part because of training but also because how prevalent guns are. We certainly need better accountability and better training. I still think we need more cops. We lag behind Europe in cops per capita, and have higher crime rates. The idea that we should stop prosecuting crimes because it affects one type of citizen or another is ridiculous for a ton of reasons, but specially because of this: minorities are more likely to be in the receiving end of a crime. We can do both invest in the social aspect to level the playing field and prosecute crime wherever it manifests.
  - Clubber 4y ago
    >I think the police is very violent in the US in big part because of training but also because how prevalent guns are. I've heard this excuse before and I don't put much into it. Most of the videos I've seen are bad cops terrorizing people who aren't armed. George Floyd was unarmed, as were countless victims. Karen Garner couldn't hurt anyone. There are many more examples. Also, we're currently a much less armed society than we were before we had this policing issue.
    - zarkov99 4y ago
      The videos you see are curated to showcase police brutality. In a country with 300 million people and as many guns, its not hard to come up with a video a day depicting things going wrong. That is not the norm though. No one is going to post videos of polite, professional interactions, even though those are, obviously, the vast majority of cases.
anigbrowl 4y ago
San Francisco has been ceding its monopoly of violence for years if not decades. Trends suggest otherwise: https://www.ppic.org/publication/crime-trends-in-california/ https://www.ppic.org/publication/crime-trends-in-california/ The big peak in violent crime in the 1990s is the crack epidemic. I personally saw driveby shooting attacks and personal murders in broad daylight; 24th street (and the Mission in general) used to be considered a no-go area by folk in better-off neighborhoods. It seems to me that the basic problem in SF is wealth disparity. The city is a great place to make money if you are in the finance or tech industries and have decent social skills. But the wealth that stays in SF tends to build upward rather than lift up less well off neighborhoods. Not only is housing expensive, community space for weird stores/art galleries/music events is also at a premium, which severely limits avenues for grey market enterprise and social mixing/mobility. The unorganized crime exists because regular jobs are not that profitable and there's a large and deliberately-created (at the federal level) underclass of undocumented people with no straightforward path to legal workforce participation. SF was a remarkably different city prior to 9-11, which ushered in a securocratic mindset in many respects. A simple but telling example is that nearly BART stations used to have toilets, though as you might expect some of them were nasty. After 9-11, these were closed in the name of security, a 'temporary' situation which has persisted for over 20 years. Concession stands like news/candy/flower vendors gradually vanished too, along with buskers. Subway stations stopped being part of the city's social life in favor of pure transit functionality. Likewise bus stops now have all sorts of built-in tech to tell you when the next bus is arriving in 20 different languages, but the bus shelters are deliberately constructed not to provide any shelter from the elements, or even make it easy to sit down. The state (qua city government) very much maintains its monopoly on violence; police budgets have gone up rather than down. It's just selectively enforced because the police are themselves a political constituency who compete with other agencies for funding. https://abc7news.com/sfpd-budget-defund-the-police-department-funding/12321818/ https://abc7news.com/sfpd-budget-defund-the-police-departmen...
- beambot 4y ago
  > But the wealth that stays in SF tends to build upward rather than lift up less well off neighborhoods. How do you square this statement with gentrification? Feels like a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation...
AviationAtom 4y ago
What boggled my mind about Mexico is how some states are EXCEPTIONALLY safe, while others are EXCEPTIONALLY dangerous. Most folks tend to presume all of Mexico is dangerous.
JPKab 4y ago
I'm American born, but grew up in a high crime area. Something that most Americans who grew up in very safe environments don't understand is that once order begins to decay, it accelerates exponentially. Growing up in highly orderly, safe environments, they completely take order for granted. This leads to them supporting policies that prioritize other things far above order, which basically describes San Francisco's childish, utopian politics for the last 20 years. The SF City Council sounds like a bunch of stoners in Che Guevara t-shirts hanging out in a dorm-room, instead of thoughtful policy makers. I lived in SF for a year (in Nob Hill) in my early 20s living with my then GF, back in 2002-2003. It was a beautiful, safe, just chill place then. It's disgusting now. I was there in 2019, and one of the things that jumped out at me was how I constantly smelled piss and a big portion of the city looked the way only the Tenderloin used to. And yes, it's the fault of the SF politicians.
- wolverine876 4y ago
  Do you have an objective way to tie to SF politicians? What about SF voters? > Growing up in highly orderly, safe environments, they completely take order for granted. Do you have evidence for their background and reasoning? Much of 'order' is often abusing politically vulnerable people, which provides 'order' for the wealthy white population, but not for others.
maratbn 4y ago
>> The most basic definition and purpose of the state is to hold the monopoly of violence. It must jealously protect this. The alternative is unsustainable anarchy followed by someone else filling that void. Can we re-phrase "monopoly of violence" to maintaining the rule of law. The government has an obligation to maintain the rule of law. Monopoly on violence by itself does not provide real legitimacy.
- midoridensha 4y ago
  You can't maintain a rule of law without the state having a monopoly on violence. Violence is the only way to enforce law.
graderjs 4y ago
Broken windows policing, right?
mola 4y ago
For me it's weird you think that the origin of crime is lack of order. I mean that's the last step in a deteriorating society, but the actual reason comes much before. It's an unfairness a lack of common narrative of well being. And most of all it's from education being neglected and families being broken. The order part you get at the end, after the rot festers.
- hollerith 4y ago
  A person can reasonably disagree with the comment you are replying to, but is not weird: it is a very common opinion that you've probably seen or heard many times.
dang 4y ago
I've detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35454781 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35454781 and moved it to the top level (just for technical reasons - the first page of the thread is currently too comment-heavy).
YeBanKo 4y ago
One thing that I want to add, is how much harder it is to live in such environment. Every door needs to be reinforced, bars on windows are more common, expensive locks in residential buildings. Someone stranded on the side of the road, but you don’t want to take chances trying to help. Every transaction is much more difficult and expensive.

sizzle 4y ago

Broken windows theory https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_windows_theory https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_windows_theory

AverageDude 4y ago
They applied that in my suburb and media kept comparing it with racism. They stopped doing that from last year and car jacking and other violent crime is on the rise again. I could never understand how “Broken Window” is racist? And I am a minority. Whatever the fix for institutional racism is need not be contradictory to Broken Window. They can work together.
- Pxtl 4y ago
  Because "broken window" is too often taken to mean "come down hard on loiterers, grafitti vandals, people who lack the money to maintain property standards, etc"... instead of focusing on violent crime. Now obviously there's a real debate to be had about how severely petty theft and vandalism should be punished. I mean, George Floyd was killed over a counterfeit bill. But once you get into violent crime everybody is on the same page. But basically, in order to get all the violent crime under control, you need a hefty police force. And a hefty police force means a lot of cops roving around hassling poor people and people of color who are just trying to live their lives, which is what the left-wing activists get angry about. Figuring out how to get effective policing without intrinsic racism/classism that always seems to come with that is a big challenge.
  - bart_spoon 4y ago
    > Because "broken window" is too often taken to mean "come down hard on loiterers, grafitti vandals, people who lack the money to maintain property standards, etc"... instead of focusing on violent crime. The broken windows theory isn’t about violent crime, it’s literally about property crime and offenses like vandalism. The idea is that when that kind of petty crime goes unchecked, the crime situation in the area spirals, both in terms of quantity and severity, eventually leading to more violent crime. You can disagree with the theory all you want, but to assert that the issue is that it should only apply to violent crime is to fundamentally misunderstand the assertion the theory is making.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - sirmarksalot 4y ago
      I thought the issue was that "broken windows" was used as a metaphor for all low-level infractions, and not literally interpreted as "fix the windows and clean up the graffiti" as the studies recommended. This then got implemented as quotas on police departments, leading to opportunistic, biased policing and the de facto criminalization of poverty. As a result, the term "broken windows" now carries a ton of baggage, and is sometimes used as a racist dog whistle.
komali2 4y ago
Is probably a fallacy of correlation being tied to causation. > The policy targeted people in areas with a significant amount of physical disorder and there appeared to be a causal relationship between the adoption of broken windows policing and the decrease in crime rate. Sridhar, however, discusses other trends (such as New York City's economic boom in the late 1990s) that created a "perfect storm" that contributed to the decrease of crime rate much more significantly than the application of the broken windows policy. Sridhar also compares this decrease of crime rate with other major cities that adopted other various policies and determined that the broken windows policy is not as effective. > In a 2007 study called "Reefer Madness" in the journal Criminology and Public Policy, Harcourt and Ludwig found further evidence confirming that mean reversion fully explained the changes in crime rates in the different precincts in New York in the 1990s.[38] Further alternative explanations that have been put forward include the waning of the crack epidemic,[39] unrelated growth in the prison population by the Rockefeller drug laws,[39] and that the number of males from 16 to 24 was dropping regardless of the shape of the US population pyramid. As always, the wikipedia article is a good place to start to look into further sources: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_windows_theory https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_windows_theory It's time to let "broken window theory," and bloodthirsty, punitive "justice" strategies, die.
- uejfiweun 4y ago
  I dunno man - to be honest, nowadays it seems you can find a study to back up any side of the debate, especially with highly politicized issues like this. I'm certain that there are studies out there showing that broken windows policing was in fact the main contributor to the decrease in crime.
  - komali2 4y ago
    > to be honest, nowadays it seems you can find a study to back up any side of the debate, especially with highly politicized issues like this Perhaps this is true, and perhaps this is a part of the issue the usa has with "different facts for both sides." > I'm certain that there are studies out there showing that broken windows policing was in fact the main contributor to the decrease in crime. I'm going to challenge you on this because I feel like this basically just contributes to the problem. Think about what you wrote, you're "certain," certain that studies exist showing our that broken windows policing works, and thus you believe it works. You arrived at a conclusion of the world with, genuinely, no evidence. You don't even know if the evidence exists! In fact you arrived at two conclusions: that your conclusion is correct, and that a lot of other people proved this with good studies. Now I challenge you to simply read the wikipedia article on the subject in its entirety and pay close attention to the "criticism" section. I've done this because I care deeply about the issue, and I've also read the various studies linked. For me, I found the "for broken policing" studies to be dubious and problematic, and the criticisms to be valid. As a result, my understanding of the world is that broken window policing doesn't work, the basic theory is a misunderstanding of actual mechanisms, and that the application of broken windows policing pulls resources from more effective solutions while also delivering inequitable justice to society. So, when you're read up as well, do you still disagree with me?

johntiger1 4y ago

Thank you for sharing your personal perspective. As a fellow immigrant, have nothing to say except that I totally agree. Many of us come from countries with less than great rule of law, and the entire reason me and my parents came here is for a better life where laws are fairly and equally enforced. That means that if you work hard - you get to enjoy the fruits of your labor.

AverageDude 4y ago
That sums up so well. Saving this.
atonse 4y ago
As an immigrant I also agree with this. I think it is mainly immigrants that appreciate how much better things are in the US. Sure they aren’t perfect but law enforcement had m worked extremely well here compared to many of the countries we’ve come From. And in chasing some form of utopian perfection we have thrown off the balance of something that worked quite well in favor of declining standards and opened the door to more crime, which affects the same people we were trying to protect in the first place.

colpabar 4y ago

So what would you say to the argument that the police are already too violent, and that too many people already get put in jail, especially minorities? That is the motivation behind the progressive policies of not prosecuting criminals. Every person not prosecuted is one less crime statistic; bonus points if that person-kept-out-of-jail is a minority. I want to be absolutely clear - I am in no way suggesting minorities are genetically inclined to be criminals or asking you to speak for all minorities or anything like that. I'm just curious, given your views and your background, what you think when you hear politicians claim that they are fighting inequality by not prosecuting criminals.

huevosabio 4y ago
I think the police is very violent in the US in big part because of training but also because how prevalent guns are. We certainly need better accountability and better training. I still think we need more cops. We lag behind Europe in cops per capita, and have higher crime rates. The idea that we should stop prosecuting crimes because it affects one type of citizen or another is ridiculous for a ton of reasons, but specially because of this: minorities are more likely to be in the receiving end of a crime. We can do both invest in the social aspect to level the playing field and prosecute crime wherever it manifests.
- Clubber 4y ago
  >I think the police is very violent in the US in big part because of training but also because how prevalent guns are. I've heard this excuse before and I don't put much into it. Most of the videos I've seen are bad cops terrorizing people who aren't armed. George Floyd was unarmed, as were countless victims. Karen Garner couldn't hurt anyone. There are many more examples. Also, we're currently a much less armed society than we were before we had this policing issue.
  - zarkov99 4y ago
    The videos you see are curated to showcase police brutality. In a country with 300 million people and as many guns, its not hard to come up with a video a day depicting things going wrong. That is not the norm though. No one is going to post videos of polite, professional interactions, even though those are, obviously, the vast majority of cases.

anigbrowl 4y ago

San Francisco has been ceding its monopoly of violence for years if not decades. Trends suggest otherwise: https://www.ppic.org/publication/crime-trends-in-california/ https://www.ppic.org/publication/crime-trends-in-california/ The big peak in violent crime in the 1990s is the crack epidemic. I personally saw driveby shooting attacks and personal murders in broad daylight; 24th street (and the Mission in general) used to be considered a no-go area by folk in better-off neighborhoods. It seems to me that the basic problem in SF is wealth disparity. The city is a great place to make money if you are in the finance or tech industries and have decent social skills. But the wealth that stays in SF tends to build upward rather than lift up less well off neighborhoods. Not only is housing expensive, community space for weird stores/art galleries/music events is also at a premium, which severely limits avenues for grey market enterprise and social mixing/mobility. The unorganized crime exists because regular jobs are not that profitable and there's a large and deliberately-created (at the federal level) underclass of undocumented people with no straightforward path to legal workforce participation. SF was a remarkably different city prior to 9-11, which ushered in a securocratic mindset in many respects. A simple but telling example is that nearly BART stations used to have toilets, though as you might expect some of them were nasty. After 9-11, these were closed in the name of security, a 'temporary' situation which has persisted for over 20 years. Concession stands like news/candy/flower vendors gradually vanished too, along with buskers. Subway stations stopped being part of the city's social life in favor of pure transit functionality. Likewise bus stops now have all sorts of built-in tech to tell you when the next bus is arriving in 20 different languages, but the bus shelters are deliberately constructed not to provide any shelter from the elements, or even make it easy to sit down. The state (qua city government) very much maintains its monopoly on violence; police budgets have gone up rather than down. It's just selectively enforced because the police are themselves a political constituency who compete with other agencies for funding. https://abc7news.com/sfpd-budget-defund-the-police-department-funding/12321818/ https://abc7news.com/sfpd-budget-defund-the-police-departmen...

beambot 4y ago
> But the wealth that stays in SF tends to build upward rather than lift up less well off neighborhoods. How do you square this statement with gentrification? Feels like a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation...

AviationAtom 4y ago

What boggled my mind about Mexico is how some states are EXCEPTIONALLY safe, while others are EXCEPTIONALLY dangerous. Most folks tend to presume all of Mexico is dangerous.

JPKab 4y ago

I'm American born, but grew up in a high crime area. Something that most Americans who grew up in very safe environments don't understand is that once order begins to decay, it accelerates exponentially. Growing up in highly orderly, safe environments, they completely take order for granted. This leads to them supporting policies that prioritize other things far above order, which basically describes San Francisco's childish, utopian politics for the last 20 years. The SF City Council sounds like a bunch of stoners in Che Guevara t-shirts hanging out in a dorm-room, instead of thoughtful policy makers. I lived in SF for a year (in Nob Hill) in my early 20s living with my then GF, back in 2002-2003. It was a beautiful, safe, just chill place then. It's disgusting now. I was there in 2019, and one of the things that jumped out at me was how I constantly smelled piss and a big portion of the city looked the way only the Tenderloin used to. And yes, it's the fault of the SF politicians.

wolverine876 4y ago
Do you have an objective way to tie to SF politicians? What about SF voters? > Growing up in highly orderly, safe environments, they completely take order for granted. Do you have evidence for their background and reasoning? Much of 'order' is often abusing politically vulnerable people, which provides 'order' for the wealthy white population, but not for others.

maratbn 4y ago

>> The most basic definition and purpose of the state is to hold the monopoly of violence. It must jealously protect this. The alternative is unsustainable anarchy followed by someone else filling that void. Can we re-phrase "monopoly of violence" to maintaining the rule of law. The government has an obligation to maintain the rule of law. Monopoly on violence by itself does not provide real legitimacy.

midoridensha 4y ago
You can't maintain a rule of law without the state having a monopoly on violence. Violence is the only way to enforce law.

graderjs 4y ago

Broken windows policing, right?

mola 4y ago

For me it's weird you think that the origin of crime is lack of order. I mean that's the last step in a deteriorating society, but the actual reason comes much before. It's an unfairness a lack of common narrative of well being. And most of all it's from education being neglected and families being broken. The order part you get at the end, after the rot festers.

hollerith 4y ago
A person can reasonably disagree with the comment you are replying to, but is not weird: it is a very common opinion that you've probably seen or heard many times.

dang 4y ago

I've detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35454781 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35454781 and moved it to the top level (just for technical reasons - the first page of the thread is currently too comment-heavy).

YeBanKo 4y ago

One thing that I want to add, is how much harder it is to live in such environment. Every door needs to be reinforced, bars on windows are more common, expensive locks in residential buildings. Someone stranded on the side of the road, but you don’t want to take chances trying to help. Every transaction is much more difficult and expensive.