The Remarkable Decline in Home Burglary Rates in Japan

https://www.tokyodev.com/articles/home-burglary-rates-in-japan

by pwim • 3 years ago

37 56 3 years ago

ggm• 3 years ago

there are elements of correlation/causation in this, so I think it's still "not clear" -But I too would think overall economic improvement reduces the "need" (for want of a better word) of pragmatic crime by poor people.

IoT like nest and other things may also make people wary of casual crime, its much more likely you're on film. I know there is a really good privacy concern around ubiquitous cameras but the other side of the coin is older, insecure and scared people who gain some comfort from knowing somebody can see whats going on around them. Ubiquitous digital cameras emerged across this timeframe.

Japan's crime culture is ideated by westerners as "about them, not us" -but this is about crime by Japanese on Japanese so it's outside that model. Certainly as a sometime frequent western visitor to Japan I have never felt the degree of situational risk I have felt in other economies, just being on the streets. It is a place where the most likely outcome of dropping your wallet is to have somebody help get it back to you. Most likely, not only.

Maybe theft from other Japanese really has declined, for it's own reasons? Maybe people no longer think its worthwhile? Which tends to the economic argument. Why steal that trivial bit of plastic and metal, if you can buy it in the 100 yen shop?

bsder4• 3 years ago

As always, take Japanese crime statistics with a large grain of salt. I remember the Japanese police have quoted something like a 90%+ clearance rate (uh, yeah, right).

Also, do I remember incorrectly or did they not go on a serious campaign to break the yakuza at the same time?

A lot of petty crime is enabled by the organized crime providing the infrastructure (fencing, financing, etc.) required for individuals to be able to convert their crime into money.

(See, for example, the current "shoplifting" spree in the US or "bike theft" rings. While individuals often commit the crimes, gangs are the big enablers by functioning as fences. It's why your stolen bike can wind up in Mexico before 24 hours have passed.)

quickthrower2• 3 years ago

The 90% clearance rate might be a result of the confession = conviction and pressure pressure pressure = confession system.

bsder4• 3 years ago

And the fact that the Japanese police won't take on "difficult" cases. If it isn't a slam dunk, they will refuse to even start to do anything about it.

graphe3• 3 years ago

Why is it so incredible that a foreign country can behave differently and have low crime? Look at the US burglary stats. https://www.statista.com/statistics/191243/reported-burglary...

Property isn't worth taking anymore.

bsder4• 3 years ago

Why is it so incredible that a foreign country can behave differently and have low crime?

It's not. However, the Japanese are notorious for underreporting negative things like suicide and crime statistics.

Property isn't worth taking anymore.

Given that the US had an almost identical order of magnitude drop in burglary (which started dropping before Japan's did) and didn't particularly do anything new, that's probably a much better explanation.

People not transacting cash is probably the biggest cause. People just don't have cash in their wallets or purses anymore.

After that is gone, what can you steal out of my house that's actually valuable?

graphe3• 3 years ago

The US has this same trend. Burglaries have dropped precipitously at similar rates. https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2019/crime-in-the-u.s.-... https://www.statista.com/statistics/191243/reported-burglary...

It's nothing magical. People don't value stuff you can steal at home anymore. The 4K TV is worth less than a nice CRT or flat screen was then. Computers and phones don't hold value long and they're often with you. Face to face crime is more common in the US, like burglaries involving people still inside.

You might just own nothing and be happy.

petepete• 3 years ago

I think in the UK the most common burglary target is car keys. Like you say, the expensive home electronics are now cheap, VCRs and hi-fis are gone, and more and more people are driving premium (BMW/Mercedes/Audi) cars - on finance/hp of course.

arethuza• 3 years ago

I'm amazed to see that the average price of a new car in the UK is now £38,585.

spike021• 3 years ago

It's interesting to read about this seeming to improve in Japan.

I'm friends with many people in the (tuner) car community there and car theft as well as parts theft is still happening too often for locals.

It's gotten to the point (well, it's been this way already for a while) where locals do not want photos of their cars posted on the internet unless their license plates are censored. This is because the license plates describe roughly the area they live in. So someone could spend time poking around Street View on Google Maps and potentially find where a local lives and either steal their car or attempt to remove expensive parts (aftermarket wheels, for instance) for selling.

graphe3• 3 years ago

My guess is that the low property crime is due to nothing worth taking in the home, and Japanese property crimes don't happen face to face. If nice cars and their parts still being stolen it looks very plausible it's not higher mortality.

freetime22• 3 years ago

Car theft spiked drastically in 2022/2023, but is still very low by historical standards (5,000 thefts reported in 2022 vs. 65,000 in 2003 [1]). It’s been in the news a lot lately, which has probably heightened peoples’ perceived risk a bit more than warranted. That being said, I think it’s sensible to avoid publishing photos of valuables on the internet where would-be thieves could take notice.

I think the shortages/increased prices of cars in the wake of the pandemic has contributed to the recent spike in thefts. Anecdotally, I looked into buying a Toyota recently, and the wait time for many of their popular models can be a year or more, or in many cases they aren’t even accepting orders. This sort of scarcity could make theft more lucrative.

[1] https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2023/08/28/japan/crime-leg...

bcherny• 3 years ago

A 12x decline is staggering, as is the consistent year-over-year drop. This smells like a data issue to me. I wonder if any changes to crime reporting standards, the definition of burglary, etc. have been rolling out.

natch2• 3 years ago

In 2003 a home security camera was crappy, low resolution, poorly connected if at all, hard to install, expensive, and rare. I can’t quite put my finger on what has changed since then.

Although to be fair most of them are still pretty bad and expensive if you get one with rent-seeking built in.

DrBazza• 3 years ago

London is one of the most camera heavy cities in the world and crime is definitely not down.

FirmwareBurner2• 3 years ago

Cameras don't stop crime because balaclavas still exist and they don't yet require a wearing 'loicense'.

l8_to_catch_up2• 3 years ago

The cameras are not there to stop crime, anyway, but to spy on and inform interference with the lives of all citizens for the benefit and power of government officials.

ascorbic• 3 years ago

Crime is down over the past 20 years though, across almost all categories

dagw• 3 years ago

Do cameras work as a deterrent? I know people who captured clear HD resolution 'portraits' (no mask or even sun glasses) of their burglar and they had to repeatedly nag the police to even bother looking at the image.

master-lincoln• 3 years ago

I can’t quite put my finger on what has changed since then.

Why do you use irony here? This is a really bad habit of communicating if you ask me. I had to read your post twice to get that you didn't mean the words you said.

I personally don't think cameras help to prevent most crimes and quickly googling for studies seems to support that (e.g. https://doi.org/10.1080/14043858.2017.1387410)

natch2• 3 years ago

Thanks for the feedback.

ryan_lane2• 3 years ago

Most comments in this thread ignore the most relevant point in the post, which is that the government has prioritized employment (and eliminating poverty - which isn't mentioned in the post), and world-wide there's a strong correlation between poverty and property (and violent) crime.

Also not mentioned in the post is the anti-social forces efforts (eliminating the yakuza), which is primarily implemented by disallowing financial transactions with organized crime, or businesses even associated with organized crime. It's hard to fence things if there's no one around to fence it. It's hard to re-sell fenced items if no one will buy from you. I really do wonder if mercari has made this problem a bit worse.

Sure, the police don't arrest people they can't convict (which is why their prosecution rate is so high), but that doesn't change the reported crimes, which this data related to, so it's not a data issue. Japan is less safe than they report (murders are often shown as accidental death in numbers, for example), but in general property crime seems to be mostly non-existent.

glandium• 3 years ago

Sure, the police don't arrest people they can't convict

Police do arrest plenty of people, but IIRC, only 30% of them are prosecuted. Because the prosecutors only send to court cases they know they'll win.

ryan_lane2• 3 years ago

Ah, yes, sorry I meant to write police don't charge people they can't convict. Mostly saying that the crime data is generally not affected by conviction rate.

ProxCoques2• 3 years ago

See also the "lead-crime hypothesis", connected to an almost global and similar decline in crime over the same time period:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead%E2%80%93crime_hypothesis

ekianjo• 3 years ago

Its not one factor like for all complex systems.

ProxCoques2• 3 years ago

Indeed - TFA, and the comments here (including mine) point out it's not one factor.

jongjong• 3 years ago

My guess: Criminals made so much money during this time due to rampant corruption, they didn't need to burglarize houses anymore.

chaostheory• 3 years ago

This has happened in many developed countries and not just Japan. My guess is due to globalism, stuff got really cheap. For example, many 70” flat screen TVs were at $400over the past few weeks. Another reason is the year by year lowering of testosterone in men.

0dayz• 3 years ago

What you're saying then is that we need to finally enforce the femboy program.

However jokes aside, the issue with testosterone being liked with crime is survivorship bias, testosterone can also be a pro-social hormone[1].

[1]https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1608085113

encody2• 3 years ago

Anecdote: I live in Japan, and one of my closest friends has had her house broken into three times. Rural Saitama. She said she wishes she had a gun.

woutr_be• 3 years ago

Did you ever inquire about her reasoning behind it? If she can get a gun, the robbers most definitely can get a gun, I’m not sure if that makes in any safer.

encody2• 3 years ago

Gun ownership is generally illegal in Japan. It was probably just a trauma response.

l8_to_catch_up2• 3 years ago

If they get a gun, she can get a bazooka.

hackeraccount• 3 years ago

If I had to pick between me and the robber being armed or both of us being unarmed I'd go for the later.

The first time I got robbed. Probably the second. By the third or fourth time though I'd be leaning more towards needing that to stop and less towards the worry about needing to shoot someone over a stolen T.V. or getting shot in turn.

weregiraffe• 3 years ago

What if she's an old lady in a wheelchair? A gun is a power equalizer.

Borrible• 3 years ago

Demographics?

https://www.encyclopedia.com/law/legal-and-political-magazin...

Tade0• 3 years ago

That would be my running assumption, as crime generally falls in ageing societies and demographics are notoriously underappreciated as a factor.

growingkittens• 3 years ago

The US drop in burglary discussed in this thread is not isolated to just burglary. All kinds of crime in the US started dropping like a rock in the 90s after record highs.

tonyedgecombe• 3 years ago

I wonder if this is because consumer goods became much cheaper. Not much point buying a stolen DVD player when a new one is only $25 from Walmart[1].

[1] https://www.walmart.com/ip/onn-HDMI-DVD-Player/1502979408

Ekaros• 3 years ago

Also why go to homes to steal stuff. When you can go to store and steal new in box...

I wonder if ratio of store theft to burglary has changed...

FirmwareBurner2• 3 years ago

What caused crime to drop in the US?

Galaxeblaffer• 3 years ago

Free Abortion is a theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legalized_abortion_and_crime_e... . But it's also been criticized. It makes allot of sense to me though.

Edit Just saw another poster posted this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead%E2%80%93crime_hypothesis which also sounds like a factor. So i guess there's probably not a singular cause.

salmonlogs• 3 years ago

Strong vibes of US Highway Fatalities vs. Tons of Lemons imported from Mexico

https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/mexican-lemons-res...

Infinity315• 3 years ago

In addition the age demographics of Japan lean significantly older. Burglary is predominantly done by people under the age of 25.

pantathei• 3 years ago

Yeah.... Crime has shifted to "sagi" or swindles, or various social engineering schemes that prey on the elderly and trick them out of their money. Why bother to burgularize when you can get well off wealthy old people to give you the money?

https://www.nippon.com/en/japan-data/h01697/

freetime22• 3 years ago

An additional conjecture I’ll throw out is that is that as crime declines, it frees up police to investigate crimes and catch non-violent criminals who might not be caught if the police were busy dealing with more serious crime.

I still remember this anecdote from an article several years ago headlined “As crime dries up, Japan’s police hunt for things to do” [1].

THE stake-out lasted a week, but it paid off in the end. The tireless police of Kagoshima, a sleepy city in the far south of the country, watched the unlocked car day and night. It was parked outside a supermarket, and contained a case of malt beer. Finally, a passing middle-aged man decided to help himself. Five policemen instantly pounced, nabbing one of the city’s few remaining law-breakers.

Can you imagine this happening in San Francisco?

[1] https://www.economist.com/asia/2017/05/18/as-crime-dries-up-...

MichaelZuo• 3 years ago

It's a completely different legal culture in Japan, the entire system is designed so that laws on the books can credibly be enforced 365 days of the year.

But they are much more careful and selective in what laws to enact in the first place.

As opposed to other jurisdictions that don't care nearly as much.

SliceOfWaifu• 3 years ago

A boy can dream...

The Remarkable Decline in Home Burglary Rates in Japan

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