How peaceful IS Europe, really? Are you including the entire former Eastern Bloc in that, as well as the UK? Hate crimes in Germany and Spain (and Russia, of course)?

Prison sentences in Europe are a joke, though.

a lot of the posts were really press releases,but yea -many crimes ,still 44 million people ? in Cal.
many big city’s under report crime so as not to have the wealthier set move away.

Crime in CA and the rest of the US has been in steady decline for decades. In CA, sure, there are a few places that are currently Dodge City-like in their violence. Oakland and Stockton come to mind. Overall, it’s not the combat zone that media sensationalists would have everyone believe. The violent crime rate in Great Britain is comparable or worse than ours, depending on how you navigate the apples and oranges approaches to data collection and classification by the FBI and the Home Office.

Our own stats (Northern Ireland) had a part to play in that at one point and the legacy of that might have filtered down through the generations. We were a war zone and ironically that meant that we had the lowest, normal crime, rate in Europe at one point. Trickier to have street crime, at least, when there’s armed soldiers and police on every corner. As I see it, more people, more potential for crime. Accepting altering factors of course.