I don't think you can compare strategies in Sweden and France. Scandinavia, Japan, etc. are known to be places where people are civic-minded, responsible adults, where wallets left on benches make their way back to their owners with the money still inside. You can count on Swedish or Japanese people to do the responsible, advised, thing without a police officer standing behind them with a nightstick. That's not true of other countries and that's why those other countries have had to take heavy-handed approaches and still found little success in them.