These past few weeks have been marked by some high-profile cases of crime in San Francisco and the Bay Area, and I always like to compare staff to each other, so here's a short thread comparing my homeland, Poland, with my new home, California, in terms of crime.

California and Poland are almost equal in population - California has 2.9% more people, 39.5M v. 38.4M in Poland. Poland is a bit older, with an average age of 40 compared to 37 in California. California also has more 20-year-olds while Poland has more 30-year-olds.

But in terms of crime, these two places could not me more different. Let's start with the worst crimes. California has more than 3x homicides Poland does, 1,679 v. 524 in 2019. And year was a record low for CA and a record high for PL.

It is even more striking when it comes to rape. People are 10x more likely to be victims of this horrific crime in California. In 2019, 13,791 people reported rape in California, compared to 1,354 in Poland.

You are also twice as likely to have your home burglarized in California. In 2019, there were 151,596 burglaries here, compared to 69,253 in Poland.

Next stuff gets a bit more tricky because of how different systems classify crimes. There were "only" 10,215 aggravated assaults in PL, compared to 104,756 (!) in CA. But in PL an assault is not counted as aggravated unless it causes long-term health damage.

So maybe there are so many other assaults? Well, no. Non-aggravated assaults are counted with robberies and there were only 8,418 in PL in 2019. In CA, there were 52,050 robberies. So even if all 8,418 were robberies, it would still be 5x less than in CA.

Larceny theft, a category that includes all sorts of theft, had 103,910 offenses in PL. Compare that to 622,869 in CA - and add another 140,732 motor vehicle thefts that are counted separately!

I think overall you get the picture. California is truly a magnificent place but crime-wise, there are places that are much safer.

But what makes Poland so much safer compared to California?

I have one answer - no drugs.

Before moving to western Europe, and now the US, I never saw a person clearly high on drugs just walking on the street. In the US, and SF in particular, this is a common occurrence.

So let's test my hypothesis.

Data on drug use is obviously (1) very hard to get and (2) probably not comparable between countries or even cities.

But there is one study that applied the same methodology across 37 countries to test drug use prevalence using wastewater. Link here: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/add.14767

There is only one city from the US - Seattle - but I think it is reasonable to expect results in SF or LA or NYC would be similar.

This study was originally EU-only, later expanded to other countries. And results for Seattle are, literally, off the charts.

For cocaine, Seattle's milligrams per 1000 people per day trace in wastewater between 300 and 600. This is the best category for Seattle; and puts the city on par with most drug-ridden cities in Europe: Antwerp, Amsterdam, London and Barcelona.

Meth is the worst. It's off the charts in Seattle, with a note that it was 308 loads at a minimum and 772 at a maximum, depending on year. No city in Europe is even close.

Seattle is also off the charts for cannabis, with a minimum of 416 and maximum of 799. The chart ends 240.

In total, for a combined doses load, Seattle takes first prize. It probably would be even worse in San Francisco.

And what about Poland? The only city they tested was Kraków, which is coincidentally the Vegas of Poland: lots of tourists, especially stag/hen parties from the UK. You would expect drug use to be high, but actually it's so low it is barely visible above the X axis.

So yeah, I do not think teaching people how to "safely" inject themselves with a drug that can potentially kill them (and people they interact with) is the way to go, San Francisco. Let alone actually supplying them with drugs/needles.

@realchrisrufo this might of interest to you given your recent piece in @CityJournal!

Also, @MyTwolffamily -- I know you are probably the most knowledgeable person in SF on the drugs/homelessness/crime problem.