From a comment on Scott’s blog post, Prison And Crime: Much More Than You Wanted To Know:
I moved for a while to a central European country and was impressed with the criminal justice system and the low level of crime/high level of compliance, despite the high amount of migration. The biggest thing I noticed is the certainty of being caught that you mentioned. Sentences were (to my American eyes) relatively short and weak – and more liberal Americans often thought there was less crime because the country was somehow more humane. But the main thing I noticed was: the certainty of being caught was high. Police were everywhere and very responsive. Small fines and one-night-in-jail punishments were everywhere for petty crimes. I think the U.S. would benefit from strong policing with simple, consistent punishments for many small crimes, especially for first time offenders.
The article got a whopping 900+ comments and generated much follow-up, more than even articles pertaining to AI stuff. So this is a topic people care a lot about. Crime is something we have all experienced or witnessed.
I disagree that this style of police would be effective in America at reducing crime. As I will expound in a forthcoming article, if the criminal justice systems and policing were swapped or demographics were swapped between the US and Western Europe, crime would surge here (replacing heavily-armed, intimating, hot-headed US police with weaker, unarmed European police) or crime would surge in the UK (replacing mostly peaceful albeit rowdy Brits with low-trust diverse Americans) that would overwhelm the disarmed, weak European police.
It’s unpopular to say, but American style policing works through vigilance, responsiveness, and deterrence. When academics and pundits argue that the ‘Nordic model’ or other European style of policing and criminal justice system is better, they ignore demographic differences , unreported crime, and a those countries having a higher tolerance for crime. The way you lower crime is to have less tolerance for it ,and prosecute it when it happens. This is not to say it’s perfect, but the counterfactual is much worse.
A common objection in the comments is the high incidence of school shootings or other examples of crime in America. Yes, this is true, but if police were swapped or demographics were swapped, shootings would be even worse here or worse in the UK.
As the quote above mentions, the UK has more police or fines, but if they are unarmed and do not actually enforce the law or if the fines are not enforced, then they are effectively useless. As many people on Reddit can attest, public urination is common in the UK, as nothing is done about it. This is common for many crimes there. Also, the UK-equivalent of police is some out of shape middle aged guy with a reflector vest and walkie-talkie, compared to armed US police. A more apt comparison would be a security guard, in which the US has plenty.
But in the US, people on cellphones will call, the police will come, and a ride will be in order due to public indecency (and possible sex offender registration if in close proximity to a school). Contrary to what you see on twitter of Apple stores being looted as people stand idly, the police do come when called. In regard to Apple, this is the exception, not the norm. No one films all the examples of the cop coming when they are called. Also, people stand and do nothing due to shock, and Apple employees are instructed to not stop looters, as the goods are insured anyway and it’s not worth the legal risk.
But back to demographics, these diverse looters would absolutely overwhelm the unarmed UK police and other agencies. It would be a bigger joke than it is ‘here’. You have to always consider the counterfactual when making comparisons between countries.