Most comments in this thread ignore the most relevant point in the post, which is that the government has prioritized employment (and eliminating poverty - which isn't mentioned in the post), and world-wide there's a strong correlation between poverty and property (and violent) crime.<p>Also not mentioned in the post is the anti-social forces efforts (eliminating the yakuza), which is primarily implemented by disallowing financial transactions with organized crime, or businesses even associated with organized crime. It's hard to fence things if there's no one around to fence it. It's hard to re-sell fenced items if no one will buy from you. I really do wonder if mercari has made this problem a bit worse.<p>Sure, the police don't arrest people they can't convict (which is why their prosecution rate is so high), but that doesn't change the reported crimes, which this data related to, so it's not a data issue. Japan is less safe than they report (murders are often shown as accidental death in numbers, for example), but in general property crime seems to be mostly non-existent.