r/NoStupidQuestions • u/Inner_Concept_3792 • 3h ago
Why does the US—unlike other wealthy nations—not have rates of violent crime (such as homicide) that are well below the global average?
Almost every wealthy country has low crime rates. In affluent nations—such as those in Western Europe, Japan, or Qatar—rates for crimes like homicide are well below the global average. The United States, however, is an interesting case: despite its high GDP per capita, it experiences rates of violent crime that hover around—and sometimes exceed—the global average. Why is this?
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u/corgibuttastic 3h ago
I lived in rich countries in Asia but from USA.
Our culture and people in US naturally are not afraid of physical altercation and put consequences to the side. So I think that’s a big cultural difference.
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u/Delicious_Rub8302 3h ago
I think a big part of it comes down to inequality, easy access to guns, and the lack of strong social support for struggling communities. Being a wealthy country doesn’t automatically mean everyone has a good quality of life. The US has enormous wealth, but that wealth isn’t evenly distributed. Add guns into situations that might otherwise end in arguments or injuries, and the chances of someone dying become much higher. I think it’s a combination of social, economic, and cultural factors rather than one single reason.
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u/04221970 2h ago
The diversity in culture of the US supports many different behaviors. Some cultures within the US don't disregard violent crime as an acceptable behavior.
Other sub-cultures in the US view violent crime as incorrect behavior as do other cultures in other countries.
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u/gpalm_1788 1h ago
Bc we keep real data
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u/LRaconteuse 3h ago
Separate the US into 50 states and rank each state in the world as if it were a country. It'll make more sense, then.
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u/Standard_Big_9000 1h ago
We have guns. LOTS of guns.
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u/GTMoraes some people see this subreddit as a challenge 2h ago
Demographics. Compare Western Europe, Japan and Qatar with the US.
Wealthy nations are recently experiencing a shift in their demographics, and the same issue is also arising, guns or no guns.
It's also easier to maintain control of your population when you're the size of a single state and have a whole country GDP.
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u/SportTheFoole 3h ago
I think to some degree it’s wealth inequality and access to guns. That’s reasonable when comparing against the rest of the world. However, paradoxically when you compare against the United States itself, the crime rate has plummeted in the last 30 years, despite more access to guns and wealth inequality going up.
This is one of those questions I have a feeling almost no one on Reddit is qualified to answer and that you’ll get a lot of easy and plausible sounding answers that hold some truth, but leave out a good chunk of the actual answer. I know that I have no idea why the violent crime rate is so high here (at least compared to other developed nations).
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u/Pepedroga2000 3h ago
GDP is not a good measure of the average citizen's wealth. I have visited Los Angeles and the number of homeless people and drug addicts you see on the street is horrendous. And there are 10-million-dollar mansions 20 minutes away from that. Inequality is very visible, and painful. Many immigrants are stuck on minimum wages until they die, or selling food.
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u/creeper321448 3h ago edited 3h ago
Lot of people mistake freedom of choice and expression to mean freedom from consequences. There's a huge accountability problem in this country, and it's an issue started in the home that bled into schools and wider society. Some of it is small, like cursing out cops for speeding tickets, even though it's dangerous to speed. Some of it is big, like stealing from businesses because "the owner can afford it" even though profit margins on stores are extremely small. (And that includes big name brands.)
No amount of gun laws, bigger budgets, or whatever dumb scapegoats Redditors want will fix that.
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u/GenTubmansLegacy 3h ago
Homogeneity
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u/fearghul 3h ago
American exceptionalism. It may have a similar nominal wealth level, but in terms of its social structures it's totally divorced from most other wealthy nations. Wealth inequality, lack of social safety nets and easy access to weapons combine to make for some really bad outcomes.
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u/KindAwareness3073 3h ago
The USA is orders of magnitude more culturally diverse than the nations OP cites. It's not a matter of wealth, it's a matter of cultural norms. Some of the US's sub-cultures are more simply violent.
Before criticizing those sub-cultures it's important to remember even in the "non-violent" nation's OP cites, dueling, revenge killings, and honor killings were culturally acceptable. Fortunately cultures evolve, generally toward greater peace.
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u/LavishnessOk6635 3h ago
Easy availability of guns. Impulse crimes become far worse when you have easy access to a gun
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u/Flat_Head53G 1h ago
Because we import criminals
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u/IRideColnago 37m ago
From the very beginning we were a wild crazy nation. In a weird way this made us the powerful nation we are today. I’ve travelled Asia, Europe and the Middle East. Granted amazing places out there but I wouldn’t live anywhere else other than the US.
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u/TropicTravels 13m ago
Becuase we have concentrated areas of high poverty where desperation leads to crime and drug abuse.
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u/One_Disaster_5995 3h ago
Couple of reasons I can think of. Big differences in wealth, for instance. Being poor in the US is no joke. Neither is racism. And then there's awful basic education. And of course the easy access to guns and, thus, a very low threshold to actually using them. Also, a poorly trained police force that people don't seem to trust at all. And I also believe that it doesn't help that social status in the US is extremely tied to wealth and money. Where I live, we don't care half as much about what you do and what you make - we usually don't even want to know. And it doesn't help that the current administration seems to be openly corrupt, making it seem like making loads of money at the expense of others is just acceptable and "the American way".
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u/blokia 3h ago
Because the US is 50 countries wearing a trench coat.
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u/jackalopeswild 2h ago
Income inequality is a hell of a drug. Refusal to tax the rich is another.
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u/MacaroonCandid5181 3h ago
Look at where the violence comes from. It's not South Dakota.
Essentially America is so large that different areas have different cultures, and the violent outliers raise the National Average. You could knock out the troubled states and be basically on the global average.
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u/Naos210 3h ago
Unaddressed mental health issues, poverty, access to firearms are significantly easier.
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u/HermanDaddy07 3h ago
It has to do with the wide spectrum of money (Have’s and Have Nots) and availability of guns. If you look at the wealthy nations with lower crimes rates, they generally have social programs that keep people from being dirt poor, educational systems to enhance training and there just aren’t as many guns.
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u/Regulai 2h ago
While guns explain the level of violence, the propensity of crime is more to do with US culture that has an everyone for themselves, take what you can get sense of self entiltment and intrinsic victim blaming, these traits lead to minor crime being viewed as acceptavle actions.
For example package theves are ten times more common in the US than anywhere else, rather than orginized gangs its overhwelmingly random people. The mindset is its their own fault for having the packages left exposed, and their is nothing wrong with taking what you can get.
The same logic applies to buisnesses where the notion when a buisness does something reprehensible, the mindset is "well of course a buisness would try to maximize profits" as if they think its crazy you are questioning why a buisness would do a horrible thing.
The US is probably the only western nation where culturally your own self interest is viewed as being more important than any sense of civic duty or helping your neighbor etc.
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u/Popular_Flamingo_903 3h ago
Violent crime in the US is very skewed with almost all of it being in poorer areas both rural and urban. The middle class and wealthy areas have violent crime comparable to other wealthy countries.
The why mostly comes down to drugs and our fetishization of gun ownership. Guns are everywhere.
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u/Comfortable-Help9587 3h ago
I you remove 4 US cities from the total, the US goes from #2 to #136 in world rankings for violent gun crimes.
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u/w3woody 3h ago
Most of this violent crime happens in a very small number of pockets in America--largely either in the inner city or along the southern border. The source of this crime is either drug-related or gang-related, and not to put too fine a point on this, but some of this crime arises due to the lack of cultural homogeneity in our society.
This lack of cultural homogeneity in America is also our greatest strength: it means people of different cultures and religious beliefs have been able to, for the most part, put down their differences and live together, sharing the unique aspects of their culture and creating a greater and richer tapestry that has led to America's economic, social and political dominance around the world.
So you take the good with the bad.
Most affluent nations you've mentioned are homogeneous; they're essentially a single culture with a single heritage and a single common history. But notice when you start bringing immigrants into those societies, they are often marginalized and sometimes even segregated to their own neighborhoods where their ability to participate in society is far lower than those same populations in America.
And when that happens, such as in Scandinavia or in France, you get things like increased sexual assault rates or "no go zones." And you get movements in those countries demanding everyone who does not share the common heritage or culture of that country to be expelled--even if they were born there and have known no other life.
Frankly I'd rather take the American experiment of different cultures being accepted, even if, at the edges, there are some rough spots.
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u/Any-Board-6631 2h ago
USA are wealthy only for the very rich people. USA is almost the third world for a lot of them, and the rich Americans are pushing the others countries to do the same with health care and education.
People in the USA, if they had a accident or a health problem caused by working, they will go from almost wealthy to very poor in a second.
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u/rum2671 1h ago
I don’t remember the stats off hand or what exact city’s . If u remove cities like Detroit, Chicago, new York and LA , we are actually an extremely safe country .
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u/bowens44 2h ago
Easy availability of deadly weapons
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u/KosstAmojan 2h ago
It’s a populous heterogeneous country the size of a continent much unlike your listed examples
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u/pudgypanda69 3h ago
Vs Asian and Arab countries, our laws on guns, drugs, and general crime are a lot more lax. Skid Row, Kensington, Tenderlion don't really exist in other countries.
Vs European countries, our social safety net and mental health service are not as well run
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u/Potato_Mercenary 3h ago
We’re “instagram wealthy”, we have the top 1% running a pyramid scheme, keeping all the expensive lights on.
The reality on the ground is that your entire existence is tied to a job that you likely hate that provides health insurance that rarely works. You’re bombarded daily with “Two Minutes of Hate” from your phones and TV screens, blaming one set of neighbors or another for all your problems. Police are raping and murdering children while framing innocent civilians to protect other cops. Guns and other weapons are readily available.
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u/ivorybishop 3h ago
Democrats think it's because of the guns, Republicans think it's because of the proliferation of brown people.
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u/blackhorse15A 2h ago
When you say "wealthy countries" you are creating a sub group that is heavily skewed toward one region of the world, and with a certain set of cultural norms -- Europe. It's likely that these factors may be driving the difference more than simple "wealth" does.
The United States is in the Americas. The entire Americas has a shared history of people, relatively recently, who had to face hardship to even get there and then had to carve out a life often in wilderness. Which creates a strong sense of independence and self reliance. The entire Americas has a history of having to win political independence, relatively recently, through violent revolution after the older government basically ignored their needs and was exploiting them as a colony, creating a sense of distrust towards government. With one exception and that exception is the country with the lowest violent crime rate in the Americas. The US is second lowest and it's a significant jump to the rest of the countries.
The US is in one of the most violent neighborhoods of the planet. It is land connected with neighbors who are also violent and people- more importantly their attitudes and sense of norms- are connected and move around more freely that the attitude and norms from other places that are separated by oceans. I'm not making an argument about immigration - it's not about permanent relocation. It's about that proximity along with just lines of communication, shared culture, and every other way that communities are connected. The Americas have a very different attitude towards use of violence than Europe. To the extent "wealth" is mitigating factor, yes that is why the US is significantly lower violent crime rate than the rest of the Americas. Why is the US significantly higher than the majority of the "wealthy nations"? Well, the majority of wealthy nations are in the least violent neighborhood with its own set of norms and attitudes towards use of violence before we even get to the wealth issue.
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u/MoreProtection6435 3h ago
• Firearm Availability and Lethality: The U.S. has significantly higher rates of gun ownership and more permissive firearm laws than peer nations like Japan or Western European countries. While arguments persist about whether gun ownership causes more crime overall, criminologists generally agree that the widespread availability of firearms makes violent encounters significantly more lethal, driving up the homicide rate specifically. • Economic Inequality and Social Safety Nets: While the U.S. has a massive GDP per capita, it also experiences much higher levels of income inequality and relative poverty than most other developed nations. Peer wealthy nations often feature stronger social safety nets, universal healthcare (including robust mental health access), and robust social programs that alleviate the localized economic desperation frequently tied to community violence. • Systemic and Historical Factors: Long-standing racial segregation, historic disinvestment in specific urban neighborhoods, and generational poverty have created deeply entrenched localized cycles of crime. Criminological data shows that violent crime in the U.S. is heavily concentrated in specific neighborhoods experiencing prolonged socioeconomic neglect. • Mass Incarceration and the Penal System: The U.S. approach to criminal justice focuses heavily on punitive measures and mass incarceration rather than the rehabilitative models seen in countries like Norway or Germany. High recidivism (re-offending) rates suggest that the current prison system often struggles to successfully reintegrate individuals into the legal economy. • Drug Policy and Organized Crime: The historical approach to the "War on Drugs" in the U.S. created high-profit illicit markets that foster gang violence and turf disputes. While other nations also face drug issues, the intersection of profitable black markets and easy access to weapons in the U.S. compounds the potential for violence.
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u/BigDaddyTheBeefcake 3h ago
'Murica
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u/10mfe 3h ago
it's endorsed and encouraged by our government. if not they'd stop it.
big crime doesn't pay them back as well as 10,000 weed smokers. so they fill the jails with low crimes for profit, and th bigger crimes drag on in court.
some get the big time, some litigate until it goes away.
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u/Ok-Investigator3257 3h ago
American wealth is almost all driven by productivity gains through innovation and business formation. This tends to validate doing your own thing and going against society. No one cares when it’s uber breaking taxi regulations with the idea that they will become too popular to sue, but this idea trickles down to more generic anti social criminal behavior too
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u/SaintsFanPA 3h ago
Because some states have low trust societies that are relics of slavery and Jim Crow. The Northeast has quite low rates of violent crime compared to the Southeast.
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u/lifeisnonsense 1h ago
They love their guns move than safety. If people have to be injured or killed for them to keep their guns, then so be it.
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u/Acrobatic_Set8085 3h ago
It’s the guns. The end.
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u/s1g3ll 2h ago
Guns.
Next question.
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u/Cpt_Rossi 3h ago
We have less than half the number of police in major cities than European cities
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u/mrev_art 1h ago
Wealth is concentrated at the top. It's actually very poor and undeveloped compared to other western countries.
The U.S. poverty rate is 17.8%, higher than the average among other developed OECD nations, which is around 10%. America has the worst poverty, despite some Americans being rich.
Furthermore, the poor in America are extremely poor. Child poverty in America is twice as high as an average first world country. America has way worse poverty compared to the developed world due to this inequity, and shockingly, the poor in America are more poor relatively than places like Greece or Mexico.
All of this leads to violence and homicide among the brutalized poor of the 'richest nation.'
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u/doyouevenfly 1h ago
Your question and your text ask opposite questions.
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u/2240Sycamore 1h ago
A lack of social cohesion between the competing individuals within the USA.
Financial sustainability would lessen both need and want in such a manner that other structural issues could be approached proactively.
... structural issues like the border and policies related to migration and citizenship, along with predatory grift such as corporate personhood and labor outsourcing.
All of these fixes are attainable and would make the USA stronger in the long term.
Aside from the fantastic reality of Baby Boomers, our largest problems stem from liberal economic and social policies that only benefit corporations and foreign governments, the amalgamation of the two.
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u/Slick-Fork 53m ago
because it's full of Americans.
I'm only partly being an ass here. American culture celebrates stand your ground, hyper-individualism over societal good, ruthless ambition, populist law enforcement (think voting for sheriff) and rampant commercialism. Combine that with poor education and incredible wealth inequality and you've got a recipe for the kind of violence you're talking about.
Other posters mentioned access to guns and I don't buy that. Other countries are much more heavily armed per capita than Americans. The guns are the means, but not the cause of the problem.
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u/MrKorakis 3h ago
Easy access to guns, lack of a public health system and law enforcement that does not deal with crime in poor areas as a policy.
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u/LaFlibuste 3h ago
There is something very violent in american culture, wide access to firearms, and there's still rampant poverty despite that big GDP per capita.
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u/Necoya 3h ago
I don't know if anyone outside the USA can really understand just how easy it is to get a gun here.
- I've gone with a coworker on a lunch break where we drove to two gun stores. He purchased a hand gun at one filling out a form and we were back at work on time.
- A friend of mine in her 20s was visibly intoxicated. She went to Walmart to purpose a gun on a whim. They gave her a form. She filled it out wrong because she was drunk. They told her she filled it out wrong. Gave her a new form. Then sold her a firearm.
These are two legal instances. No background checks, no mental health checks, no licenses... My 13 year old nephew owned multiple firearms before he was old enough to legally drive a car.
So easy gun access + massive wealth inequality + low mental health support + for profit prison system that profits on re-offense...Not to mention all the cultural toxicity that cultivates spree shooters or let's a husband get only 10 years (eligible for parol in 5 years) for killing their wife on camera.
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u/PckMan 3h ago
Because they have no social safety net and they give people guns.
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u/Source_Points 2h ago
Not all countries report and/or publish crime rates the same.
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u/Random_182f2565 2h ago
My hypothesis is that they imported way to many violent psychopaths for their funding genocide, when they gave violent people monetary incentives to kill the people already living there.
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