Democracy 3 has two crime measurements. Violent Crime and Crime Rate. Obviously they can vary massively, depending on your policies. I’ve been investigating the differences between the UK and the USA to try to get the policies to all make sense, whilst also presenting the player with roughly sensible crime and violent crime rates in these two countries. This is, of course, totally impossible. But I like to try six impossible things before breakfast, so I am trying anyway. If all else fails, i can include cultural override scripts to nudge the stats in the right direction. Some countries do naturally have a more law-abiding culture than others, so this is fairly acceptable.
Anyway…
Where I live in the UK, people think that our ban on handguns is a good way to reduce violent crime. In the US, many people think that their freedom to own handguns is a good way to reduce violent crime. I won’t get into the argument too much, except to say I can see both things making sense. If there are more guns, surely there will be more crimes using them (especially suicides). I simply cannot kill a burglar fleeing my home without a gun (although I could probably maim him given twenty seconds to grab my bow). Surely gun availability increases crime… and yet… If I was a burglar, I think I’d be far less likely to break into someones house if I thought they had a pistol under the pillow. And I’d be wary of robbing a bank if half the customers were packing firearms. Hmm…I dunno…
You never see this sort of thing in bradford on avon.
Anyway…
A look at the impartial (ish) world of statistics makes for interesting reading:
http://www.numbeo.com/crime/rankings_by_country.jsp
United Kingdom 39.78
United States 53.44
So *more* crime in general in the USA?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate
United Kingdom 1.2
United States 4.8
So a LOT more homicides in the USA?
I’m not trying to argue for gun control. I just want to work out *why* this is the case. Could it be cultural? is the history of the USA (more recent wild west, frontier attitude) making them more trigger-happy? Is US culture more violent than the UK (I doubt it, we watch the same movies). Maybe Britain has less inequality and more CCTV cameras? It’s a really difficult one to analyze. maybe there *is* something to the argument that more guns just leads to more gun crime, but then why is the overall crime rate not lower? Is the lower population density an issue meaning police response times are slower? maybe Americans report crime more than Brits do? maybe the US has more laws to break?
Of course, we could debate this all year. People do. It’s just one of hundreds, probably thousands of relationships in the game I’m trying to get right. Don’t yell at me if you disagree. It’s all very very easy to mod :D. But out of curiosity, how do you explain the UK/USA crime stats differences?