What are we doing wrong?

Don't get me wrong, I love being Australian. I love living here. I do love travel but I think this country is best suited to me and we are indeed very lucky (for the most part). However, I saw this on my travels and I can't get it out of my head. Where did we go so wrong?

In Japan, the houses are right on the footpath or road. No fence, no distance. They leave their bikes (or prams) out the front. The bikes have bags with presumably stuff in it. Or the prams have nappy bags underneath. The bikes aren't chained to anything.

No one steals them. There is no presumption anyone would.

In Australia (and America), you can barely get a parcel left on your doorstep (which is a good walk away from the street) without someone nicking off with it. Where did we go wrong? What aren't we doing that created this difference?

My husband had his bike stolen with an angle
grinder cutting through the chain. The guy turned up almost immediately after my husband left work for the day. All caught on camera (and the person arrested) so there was no mistaking what went down.

I asked a FB group and one person said they'd studied this in Criminology and it was put down to the closed culture (homogenous race is linked to lower crime, but also they are raised to respect and honour others from an early age). Another (American) blamed high meth problems in our countries and thought you could only be crime free in a gated community (interestingly, Australians view gated communities quite differently, so that's a whole other cultural clash there). Another person asked if there were high punishments for crime, or was it out of politeness that people didn't steal?

I do not have the answer, but clearly we are doing something wrong as a society. I remember in France at Xmas time I pointed out to a local friend how amazed I was that the Christmas trees in the streets had decorations just hanging from the branches, all over Paris. He looked at me quizzically and said "They're decorations. Why would anyone steal them?" It was incomprehensible to him. I pointed out that in Australia, those decorations had to be wired into the tree, otherwise it would be stripped bare in minutes on the first Saturday night after the city had had a few drinks....That trip was also when there were bombings in Paris and I'd not registered I'd shown my bag to security on the way into the department store. On the way out, I walked over to Security so he could look inside my bag. He questioned "Why would I want to look into your bag when you leave?" I then realised he was looking for bombs, not shoplifters. I mumbled something about in Australia we check when you leave because we steal stuff...it was not my finest patriotic moment.

One of the hotels we stayed at, I paid in full on check in because I wanted to make a quick getaway in the morning. We are 4 people, 2 rooms so should we order in house or hit the mini bar, we could potentially rack up a large bill. I said "Here's the credit card for incidentals" (a different card). The clerk replied "Oh don't worry about that". Instantly, my first thought in my head was "Are you crazy? What if I'm a thief" I know that I am not and I still thought that. I clearly have a default expectation or wariness wired into my head from cultural experience (or newspaper brain washing). So am I seeing more petty crime in Australia than is there? (Are the gated communities in the US seeing danger outside their walls that is above the reality?).

So I ask you, what are we (quite a number of countries around the world, not just Australia and America) doing wrong? Why do we have a culture that assumes theft, that builds society with that expectation, and where it does happen frequently?

How can the Japanese just leave their bikes unlocked and they're still there in the morning?

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