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Interesting.

In the US break ins very much are more likely in less affluent areas.



In Germany it's very much not like that, organized groups (often coming from and returning to eastern european countries) make up a big chunk of burglaries and they are careful to choose areas with a high effort/reward ratio, which are rarely the low income areas.


I think because of low poverty and expansive social nets, crimes out of desperation are rare. E.g. Reducing crime is explicitly one of the main reasons why Switzerland mantains its heroin programme, providing the drug for free to people who have failed mutliple withdrawal attempts.

The risk/reward for small crimes just doesn't check out for almost everyyone. Why a lot of those is in the hands of organised crime that can scale and optimize it and pick out the people willing to do the "last mile" dirty work.




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