While the dataset is kinda small, I think it makes a lot of sense. This is something right out of Jane Jacobs' "Eyes On The Street" idea from "The Death And Life Of Great American Cities":<p>> “A city street equipped to handle strangers, and to make a safety asset, in itself, our of the presence of strangers, as the streets of successful city neighborhoods always do, must have three main qualities:<p>> First, there must be a clear demarcation between what is public space and what is private space. Public and private spaces cannot ooze into each other as they do typically in suburban settings or in projects.<p>> Second, there must be eyes upon the street, eyes belonging to those we might call the natural proprietors of the street. The buildings on a street equipped to handle strangers and to insure the safety of both residents and strangers, must be oriented to the street. They cannot turn their backs or blank sides on it and leave it blind.<p>> And third, the sidewalk must have users on it fairly continuously, both to add to the number of effective eyes on the street and to induce the people in buildings along the street to watch the sidewalks in sufficient numbers. Nobody enjoys sitting on a stoop or looking out a window at an empty street. Almost nobody does such a thing. Large numbers of people entertain themselves, off and on, by watching street activity.”<p>I love it. Simple, elegant.<p>Would love to hear if anybody has any divergent thoughts about how this sort of p2p peer-surveillance/protection mechanism works in other complex systems!
I live in Kyoto and was surprised to learn that there were even 18 convenience store robberies in the year before the program started. It's really safe here so I wonder what percentage of those armed robberies included assault on the clerk.
Anyway, this is a good idea. And the Kyoto taxi drivers are amazing too. They aren't your standard "just arrive in the country and don't know where anything is" taxi drivers that are found in many cities. These guys usually own their own taxi and take great pride in knowing where and how to get to anywhere in Kyoto quickly and safely. If you are in Kyoto and take a taxi, you'll never have to worry about being taken the long way so they can get extra money. So good on them for working with the police in this situation.
I really like alternative solutions like this to bad behaviour. My favourite instance of this is story of hooded teenagers outside stores intimidating passers by and general unwanted loitering in car parks etc. The solution was to loudly play music that the miscreants would really hate, like Engelbert Humperdinck, Neil Diamond, Dolly Parton etc. They moved on pretty quickly because they couldnt stand listening to it.
I can't even imagine living in a state where a city with 1.4 million people having 4 robberies in participating stores.<p>That's crazy.<p>Of course I live in Michigan.<p>I've been thinking about crime a bunch after listening to the Serial podcast and thinking about The Wire. Crime is expensive. Trial, police, incarceration are all resource intensive. It would be amazing to have those resources available for city residents to do something else, like have a cleaner town, better schools, safer roads.
When I worked in fast food in high school, we had a standing policy that all police officers got the 50% off employee discount. Generally, having a couple cruisers in the parking lot deterred trouble.
Notably, using a similar tactic, the 'Gävle goat' survived this Christmas from arsonists because the town set up a taxi rank around the wooden structure:<p><a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/christmas-2014-the-giant-goat-who-has-survived-against-all-the-odds-9948703.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/christmas-201...</a>
The increase in robberies at non-participating stores is a bit concerning. This might deter in a similar manner to The Club, which did a good job of preventing <i>your</i> car from being stolen but didn't drop the overall crime rate.
The data set is far too small to draw serious conclusions from yet.... especially the 'increase' in stores that weren't participating (although a 50% drop 'feels' like it should be significant...).<p>Still, hopefully the effect is real and less people suffer as result. :)
This only works in a country where guns are rare.<p>Another common crime-prevention device in Japan is orange dye balls. Convenience store clerks have some handy to throw at robbers. This marks them for later pickup by cops.<p>It probably wouldn't help much in the US.
Some of the headlines are hilarious. This one detailing a convenience store robbery in particular: <a href="http://en.rocketnews24.com/2014/05/06/saitama-man-robs-7-eleven-with-knives-steals-3-onigiri/" rel="nofollow">http://en.rocketnews24.com/2014/05/06/saitama-man-robs-7-ele...</a>
Given Japan's murder rate - roughly 400 to 500 per year in a nation of 127 million - I have to wonder what would happen if you just refused to comply with a robber. What are the odds they'd proceed to attack, much less try to kill you. I suppose the clerk might risk a beating.
Why there are so many idiotic headlines?)<p>It should be "Kyoto taxi drivers reduce robberies <i>of grocery stores, not themselves</i> by 50 percent by <i>sitting and</i> doing nothing <i>in their cars on a vacant parking lots in front of grocery stores</i>.
18 + 7 incidents (participating and nonparticipating, respectively) before the program - for an entire small region of the country. I wonder if the price of implementing the program compares to what should be a minuscule insurance policy.
Viewing the size of the dataset this really does not mean anything. It's like training a statistical model on 10 data points and proudly saying that you have 95% accuracy at predicting something when actually you don't.
This idea leaves me feeling a bit uneasy; aren't the robberies still taking place, just at different locations?<p>There's also the missing question: what happens if all the stores start offering parking to the taxi drivers?
I didn't think Japan was an anti-crime mecca but it is surprising to read about high robbery rates there.<p>Well I guess a dozen robberies among a million people is a fraction of anywhere in the USA.<p>I am more curious WHY people are robbing convenience stores in Japan than the ways it is being combated because it means there are turning elsewhere to solve whatever money problem they seem to have.
This is a perfect opportunity to plug this book, on the reverse problem:<p>"Streetwise: How Taxi Drivers Establish Customer's Trustworthiness"<p><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Streetwise-Establish-Customers-Trustworthiness-Foundation/dp/0871543095/" rel="nofollow">http://www.amazon.com/Streetwise-Establish-Customers-Trustwo...</a>
I have always wondered why nearly every time I enter a convenience store in Japan sure enough there are 2-5 people standing there reading magazines for seemingly a really long time. I always wondered why don't they just buy it and at read it at home?
I'm just going to leave this here:<p>> Police are clearly happy with the results and the shops are also pleased with not have <i>knives</i> waved in their faces<p>Emphasis mine.
I read this and thought - Oh, so the cabbie is supposed to go limp when a robbery occurs; what a uniquely Japanese style solution. But it's not that at all. Gypped again.