'We could do it differently': Why the US lags behind allies at 'eliminating crime'

19 June 2023

Ever since President Richard Nixon's 1968 campaign, the GOP has been portraying itself as the party of law and order — often equating liberal and progressive policies with high crime rates. Yet many European countries that are more liberal than the U.S. also have much lower rates of violent crime.

One of them is the Netherlands, which Washington Post opinion writer Jennifer Rubin recently visited. In her June 19 column, the Never Trumper lays out some reasons why the Netherlands is considerably safer than the U.S.

"In the Netherlands," Rubin observes, "there are roughly 2.6 guns for every 100 people; there are more than 120 guns per 100 people in the United States. In the Netherlands, it is very, very hard to get a gun; in the United States, it is ridiculously easy to get guns…. In the Netherlands there are about 27 gun homicides a year, not 27 per 100,000. Total."

Rubin continues, "In the United States, the Pew Research Center reports, 48,830 people died from gun-related injuries in 2021. The U.S. population is about 20 times that of the Netherlands; U.S. gun homicides are more than 1777 times the number in the Netherlands."

The columnist also notes that "the Dutch do not incarcerate people for drug addiction" and "have locked up so few people" relative to the U.S.

"In short," Rubin points out, "the United States has 163 times the number of incarcerated people as the Netherlands, more than eight times as many per 100,000 people…. Each country made choices. For all the money spent on police, courts and incarceration, do we in the United States feel safer than the Dutch? Almost certainly not. Because we are not. The Netherlands made choices about guns and drug addiction that have led to startlingly different outcomes."

In early May, the Miami Herald listed some of the countries that have issued travel advisories for the U.S., including New Zealand, Canada, the U.K., France, Uruguay, and Venezuela. However, the inclusion of Venezuela on that list is ironic in light of its crime rates. In 2022, according to Statista, Venezuela's homicide rate was 40.4 per 100,000 people, which is much lower than the 90 per 100,000 rate it had in 2015.

The Miami Herald reported, "New Zealand’s current travel advisory level for the U.S. is a 2 out of 4, meaning travelers are advised to exercise increased caution…. Like Canada, Australia does warn citizens that violent and gun-related crimes are more common in the U.S. …. The U.K. government advises its residents to stay vigilant when traveling to the States."

Another major difference between the U.S. and the Netherlands is how the countries handle sex education, which is more comprehensive in the Netherlands. According to The Atlantic, sex-ed in The Netherlands starts as early as four.

In the U.S., the Christian Right blames sex-ed for everything from sexually transmitted diseases to crime. But Anna Katz, reporting for The Duke Center For Global Reproductive Health in 2018, noted, "The Netherlands boasts one of the lowest rates of teen pregnancy in the world, as well as low rates of HIV and other STIs. While widely accessible contraception certainly contributes to this, a growing body of research suggests that starting comprehensive sexuality education at a young age helps avoid unintended pregnancies and sexually transmitted infections."

Rubin argues that the U.S. could learn a lot from the Netherlands — but chooses not to.

"We are very good at feeding a criminal justice system (in the U.S.)," Rubin observes. "We're not so adept at eliminating crime…. Understand, then, that we have our current criminal justice system because we have fetishized guns, criminalized addiction, neglected mental and emotional health, and resisted addressing social factors driving crime. We could do it differently. We simply don't want to."

Access Jennifer Rubin's full Washington Post column at this link (subscription required).

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