Why does Canada have far less crime than the United States?

They are genetically superior.

Far fewer people living below the poverty line; far better social welfare organizations for people who need them. That means less despair and less economic dislocation.

I’d go with because they have much less population density.

I know this is something that needs far more research than what I could expect someone on a Q&A to provide, or could even be conveyed on a Q&A website. But we have an awful lot of people living on public assistance in the States. And dare I say, fewer in Canada ON public assistance than in the U.S. and a lower percentile of citizens on public assistance in Canada.
So is the absence of social welfare programs and a safety net really it?

I lived on S.S. disability for three years and could have stayed on longer, and still have Medicare and Medicaid (Tenncare).

The reality of far fewer below the poverty line certainly makes sense, but Appalachia and N Alabama and the Ozarks also has a huge percentile of people living in poverty. with les crime (though still considerably more than Canada) But, as Seawulf points out, they also have lower population density.

The Netherlands has a relatively high population density, however. It varies from city to city but many cities in Europe and Asia have low crime but high density, and less crime than the U.S.

Income inequality Canada is better than the U.S., but not by all that much. The article raises an interesting point in claiming that the rich may also be affected negatively by high income inequality.

Single payer health care, far superior social safety net, and effective gun control all spring readily to mind.

Don’t Appalachia and Alabama and the Ozarks also not do great for education?

Much of the US seems to me to have somewhat different contexts for education, intelligence, work, merit, compassion, respect, and so on, compared to other Western nations, although there is some overlap. I expect the answer is in there somewhere.

Something with weapons?

@rebbel Scratching my head. You think maybe?

Nah, just trolling. ~

I think Part of it is because half of their country isn’t built on the idea that they are a nation separate from the rest of the States, and they’re still raging and fighting that battle to this day. They are a happier, more peaceful country, I think. But I don’t know. I’ve never been there.

Universal access to health care, including mental health care. Guaranteed sick leave, holidays, and vacation. 15 weeks of paid maternity leave, plus up to 35 weeks of semi-paid parental leave. Canada Pension Plan (CPP), Old Age Security (OAS), and private pensions, which combine to form a retirement safety net. University costs that average $7K per year. An income tax system that’s simple and straightforward.

Life’s better in Canada. Unfortunately, the weather isn’t.

Violent crime rates in the US are exceptional compared with most western countries not just Canada. Homicide victims per 100,000 inhabitants are 5.35 in America compared with around 0.5 to 1.68 in Europe. Even China has only 0.62 making you nine times more likely to be murdered in the States than in China.

The reason that comes to mind is of course the easy access to weaponry in the US but I don’t think that can be the whole story. It is not so long ago that the US was a lawless frontier society and even today the concept of a social conscience has not advanced very far. The prevailing ethos is I’ve got mine and I don’t care about you. It is a rat race society and devil take the hindmost. Where people feel they are living in a society that doesn’t care about them then they will not care about society.

Most of the people I know were raised with guns, rifles at least, in the house. Not locked up, either. Access to guns has always been easy in America. But something has changed in the last 25 years…..

I have a friend who states that Canada is the sane version of the United States. His theory is that this results almost exclusively from that country’s missing out on the curse of slavery. His argument is convincing. For example, it’s no coincidence that the places notorious for hardscrabble existence just happen to be slave states. For those that counter that places like Chicago or Baltimore are murder capitols, the answer goes “what happens when you pen up former slaves in concentrated ghettos and restrict them from jobs and opportunities.” Then there’s the solid seldom considered fact that the endemic poverty describing white folks in dog patch America results rom the necessity to keep black folks in their place. This country would have adopted universal single payer healthcare during the Truman administration. Even the Dixiecrats recognized the benefits to their desperate white constituents, but better to see them all dead and buried than compelled to treatment in an integrated hospital. How many of our problems do you suppose can be walked back to race. For instance, why does it just so happen that the idea of union representation is most virulently demonized in places where unity between struggling black and white folks is so ingrained that the suffering is more or less accepted as necessary by the victims themselves.

Wow.

I’m thinking there are many factors, but I agree slavery and segregation are a huge part of the reason. You can see the difference just from the North to the South. The South grew up differently, and some of the affects still can be seen. There are plenty of problems in northern cities also, but some of that still has to do with racism and inequality in the past.

Segregation affected education, not only for black kids, but for white kids too. Desegregation caused some white families to leave good public schools for rinky dink private white school. Now, private schools are better, many are great, but very expensive. I don’t know what the school situation is like in Canada over the last 75 years.

Then add in the access to guns over the last 75 years.

Canada has a much smaller population and more social safety nets.

Until April, 1955 Canada had more crime. That’s when my family and I left there, and came here.

If only you fools had built a northern wall. ;-o

There is still a lot of anger in the south to this day.

It doesn’t have a border with Mexico which sends all its druggies, rapists and criminals over here. That is also why the crime rate in Mexico is so low.

LOLL!