People aren’t stealing for a lack of being told not to do so in America…

Do you mean because they're poor? There's plenty of poor people in Japan, but they don't resort to stealing people's phones or wallets. Again, it's cultural. And it's not just America; over in Europe where there's a far better social safety net than America, petty theft is commonplace, especially pickpocketing (which, to America's credit, is almost unheard of there, which again shows this stuff is cultural).

As a European, I have to protest.

Pickpocketing is only a concern in tourist traps like if you went to visit the tower of Pisa out something.

And waking around my university buildings, it's very common to see people leaving their stuff including expensive laptops to reserve their spot in the library and random tables in hallways that have them. Though this is frowned upon if you're going for more than a few minutes.

Pickpocketing does not exist in America. Even on crowded public transportation systems. It's a cultural phenomenon.

> Pickpocketing is only a concern in tourist traps

I have not spent a huge amount of time in Europe but judging from the way certain minority groups are spoken about by many Europeans, it is not a widely held belief in Europe that pickpocketing is limited to tourist areas - although I'm sure that's mostly true.

I’m saying it’s not because we’re not “teaching” people not to do it, or not telling them not to do it, like the parent comment says. Of course we tell everybody not to steal. Clearly telling and teaching are not the gap here.

I live in America and leave my valuables unattended in public all the time. It’s locale-specific.

It’s always a culture shock for me to travel to other places in America and see bars on store windows, homeless people, signs telling me not to leave stuff in my car. I can’t understand how people let things get that way or why they allow it to continue.

What exactly are "they" going to do about it? Set up a surveillance police state where everything in public is monitored all the time, and then catch the thieves and "disappear" them so they don't re-offend? This isn't something you can easily stop without resorting to extreme policing measures. The reason it doesn't happen in Japan is purely cultural: people simply don't think to do it, because it's culturally unacceptable. It's just like pickpocketing in America: no one does it, even people who really are thieves and would steal stuff out of your car. There are crimes in Japan, but they're other kinds of crimes (usually some kind of scam). Just like there's plenty of crimes in America, but pickpocketing just isn't one of them.

There's no extreme policing where I live in America, yet these things don't happen.

We already live in a surveillance state - there's cameras everywhere and the police can use your phone's location data pretty much willy-nilly.

So the net result is some Americans are already living in a surveillance state and don't even get the touted safety benefit.

People in places like this need to take a good, hard look at what causes society to break down in this way. People all through this thread want to blame things like safety nets and not enough money...I live in a very poor area in a red state with basically no safety nets beyond the federal minimums. Would I like more safety nets? Yes. Is the lack thereof the cause of crime? No.

If a brief period of extreme policing though is necessary to change the culture and incentives, maybe it's worth it though, especially given the fact that statistics show that most of the problem is people continually reoffending. Why would you want to live in a low-trust society where you have take being robbed as a real risk? What kind of knock-on effects does that have? People talk about car culture, for example - doesn't that reinforce it? How does that affect kids? Neighborhoods and communities? Anxiety and depression? It's just such a huge negative it's mind-boggling to me that people tolerate it and justify it.