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Comment by ThePadawan | Hacker News Reader

Not living in the USA.

The vast majority of people in the US live in safe neighborhoods. Burglary and home invasion are some of the least common crimes committed. The reasons are that it has a very real chance of getting you killed, the prison penalties are steep, (B&E is a charge in and of itself, along with the larceny) and its rewards are complete garbage. A fence will give you 5% of the retail value of the product, if you're lucky (even less for stuff like jewelry). You have to be completely tweaked out on meth and crack or be a dumbass teenager to even consider it these days.

From http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2011/c...

In 2011, there were an estimated 2,188,005 burglaries

Victims of burglary offenses suffered an estimated $4.8 billion in lost property in 2011

Seems pretty high to me.

And most of them happen in concentrated areas (inner city), which means that the vast majority live in safe areas. If you aren't living in Gary, Indiana or somewhere similar, it's pretty silly to be scared of burglary. Perfectly reasonable to take precautions, but it's crazy to go overboard.

Fewer than a lot of other countries, including many that are considered very safe/desirable places to live:

200X comparisons: http://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/stats/Crime/Burglar...

2012 (p. 8): http://www.civitas.org.uk/crime/crime_stats_oecdjan2012.pdf

A higher burglary rate than the US in both rankings are Switzerland, Sweden, Denmark, Iceland, New Zealand, and Australia.

(In fact, that makes me wonder a little whether these numbers might be a mix of both "burglaries" and "whether the citizenry even bothers to report" – with other countries having more burglaries that people don't report because it doesn't help...)

Page 9 is the relevant graph for burglary on the Civitas pdf. The US is right in the middle.

One thing I'm surprised by is the ridiculous level of assaults committed in Britain. What's going on there?

At the risk of being downvoted into oblivion: No guns.

In the US, if you're going to assault someone, they may well be packing. It makes you think twice. But in the UK, you know they're not (with close to certainty), so the only question is whether you're tougher than them.

But a large number of other countries in Europe have similar gun control, and they don't have the assault rates that Britain does.

Ah, true. I was only thinking of US vs UK.

Lots of very drunk people.

Glasgow is/was ridiculously violent. American surgeons who want to learn stab trauma go to Glasgow for experience. People are stabbed in the hospital.

Scotland used to be the most violent nation in the developed world according to the UN.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6415504

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/the-streets-of-sc...

http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2004/apr/11/ukcrime.lornamarti...

Things have got better over the last five years. It's still pretty bad. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-22276018

Pretty high in relation to what? I live in the Netherlands, which is considered to be a safe country, right? We have 0.00539 B&E's per inhabitant, whereas the US have 0.068 B&E's per inhabitant. Not that much difference, if you ask me.

It's more than 10x higher?

He mis-wrote it. The Netherlands is significantly less, but not by an order of magnitude.

US per 100000 people: 715 Netherlands per 100000 people: 428

For reference, England is 986, Sweden is 1029, Australia is 1017, Belgium is 891, and Japan is 117.

12 times more is not a big difference? Blimey!

In addition to the other commenters, "burglary" generally includes breaking and entering a vehicle as well, so without further information it's hard to tell what percentage is attributable to each. Particularly since the OP is interested in "an extra layer of home security", if home burglaries are a lower %, then those numbers could seem inflated with regards to the issue at hand.

Additional factors just from the linked page are:

1.) Burglaries of residential properties accounted for 74.5, of which the OP specifically mentions

2.) 60.6 percent of burglaries involved forcible entry, and 6.3 percent were forcible entry attempts.

So naively (without additional data on if forcible entry is less or more common for commercial or residential properties), then one could assume that a more realistic number is 2.2M * .745 * .669 = 1.09M which is about half the chance given the "totals".

This is also compounded if the OP is actually living in a "safe" area (or if it just feels that way)

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