I once lived in Singapore for a while and we were all sure that nobody would steal anything anyway, so we just never bothered to lock the doors. (That was also very helpful if you wanted to stop for a quick coffee with a date in the middle of the night.) You could see the MacBooks from the street, but nothing ever went missing. I don’t know what exactly it was, but Singapore felt incredibly safe and crime-free.
Wait, explain the quick coffee bit? You'd let yourself into a random person's house to make coffee?
I think it's the coffee machine at the office
I used to accumulate a pile of change on my desk from buying coffees.
Never got touched across about a hundred different offices around Australia (I’m a consultant).
Except once: the pile was replaced by a $50 note and a hand written apology saying the guilty party needed change for the parking lot machine. I had less than $30 there in coins so… profit!
>I don’t know what exactly it was, but Singapore felt incredibly safe and crime-free.
The extreme punishments for breaking the law might have something to do with it.
It's not actually the extreme punishments, it's the consistent small punishments. It's that you'll actually, seriously get a ticket for littering, even if it's a relatively small ticket. The "Fine City" enforces it's vision in a ubiquitous way, so people just don't break the rules.
This seems like the most effective solution. Imagine if you knew that if you littered, there is a 100% chance you would get a $10 fine immediately. Almost no one would litter ever again, even though the fine is much smaller than the fine is in most countries.
Problem is it just takes a lot of resources to police, more than the fine revenue. But with CCTV and computer vision it's getting increasingly cheap.
That is just the part that gets the most press. Having lived here for a while now.
1. At a young age, you're taught to follow the rules.
2. "Someone's always watching". Lots of CCTV. Community reports.
3. Plenty of police who have the ability and time to investigate even the most petty things.
Trust in the system starts with 1 but is really carried day to day by 3.
> The extreme punishments for breaking the law might have something to do with it.
Historically speaking, this is almost never true. People constantly think the solution is crueler punishments and we have hundreds of years of records of what happens.
People who commit crimes generally do not think they will be caught and therefore the punishment is of no concern to them. The better way to deter crime[1] is to convince more of the public that people who commit crimes are usually caught. Preferably by actually catching people who commit crimes.
1. aside from the obviously effective but difficult to implement deterrent of meeting everyone's physical needs
A lot of crimes are also committed by people who genuinely don't think about the consequences when they are acting. It doesn't matter how bad or how certain the consequence is, because they aren't thinking about it at all.
But apparently there are far fewer such people in Singapore. How would you explain this?
I think the explanation is that growing up in an environment where even small infringements are consistently punished makes people think about the consequences more.
"Hundreds of years of records" sounds like a big exaggeration. I don't think we can reliable talk about more than 150 years, and even that would be sparse, covering only some lucky countries. And this data is hard to evaluate as adjusting it to culture shifts, economy changes, and even to what constitutes "cruel" in different periods isn't easy.
I think, it's reasonable to suspect that demonstrative cruelty in crime punishment may have bad side-effects in the long run, but there are just a few cases in recent history where at least short-term outcomes seem to support the claim that it may reduce crime levels.
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I don't think it explains everything.
I think social norms have a lot to do with it. It's like the actual social costs of being the one who broke the social trust is so high it dissuades people.
It worked for me on a lower level. Everyone cut queues and will grab an empty seat if it looks available at a packed restaurant here so I do it too but I never did that when I lived in Singapore because I knew that's not how things work there and people would genuinely be mad at me for doing it.
It's like a self-fulfilling, self-improving environment. Same with Japan and cleanliness.
State provided housing for most and a booming economy with low unemployment must help too.