Last I looked at it the explanation generally are:
1) Fewer guns (easier to solve a murder case when they had to use their hands)
2) Fewer murders (virtuous circle effect)
3) Less racism.
Honestly watching UK and Nordic police procedurals is like competence porn. These people just do their jobs and care about justice??! And they aren't complete mouth-breathing too-stupid-for-the-military morons? Oh, to dream!
Yeah I mean I’d love to be wrong but everything I know about US policing, and my little knowledge of how insistent the UK press is about the guilt of the wrongly accused (Knox, that random nurse)…
only 50 murders or so a year is also very remarkable when you remember that Glasgow is in Scotland, but I assume some kind of evolutionary arms race has occurred so that Glaswegians have natural armor.
Here's a fun anecdote for you: when I was doing casework for those lifers that had all been sentenced, the workload was roughly split between three of us. Surnames A-M, surnames N-Z, and one person doing Mc & Mac. Had its own cupboard and everything
One of my sister's friends walked home from reenactment drunk and still wearing chain mail in Glasgow. The kid that tried to knife him got a hell of a shock.
Ah. Reenacters ...
I got left minding the fire while visiting some reenacting friends. One of the older guys, as they headed off for a march round town, looked at me rather suspiciously
"Are you armed?"
"No!"
"Well, here's a hammer. If anyone bothers you, twat them and say you were in the loos..."
I know this is a serious response to a joke, but everywhere especially Americans should copy the work of the https://www.svru.co.uk/ which actually worked
of course the average murder in Scotland *is* a guy standing over the corpse proclaiming that he kilt the feckin bastard and he'd dae it agin but that's the case in most countries honestly.
the UK has a pretty robust appeals system and you can check out the Scottish cases on Bailii (which is always fascinating, if often depressing, reading) - https://www.bailii.org/scot/cases/ScotHC/2025/
Gang violence is hard to investigate to begin with because nobody talks. I have a pretty low opinion of the LAPD but its not just deliberate fuckery - if you swapped Police Scotland and the LAPD I'm certain the LAPD's clearance rates would go up and Police Scotland's would go down.
Yeah, people massively underrate the fact that endemic violence pretty much shuts down any real ability to enforce the law. This isn't a new problem either! "Troublesome pocket where people resolve all disputes internally and refuse to let the sheriff do his job" is a stable trope throughout time.
Once endemic violence sets in, a solid tranche of killings are in revenge for prior killings, which are themselves likely in revenge for other killings. So the witness base is just murderers all the way down, and half the time the perp may well be killed himself by the time there's enough evidence.
Glasgow was notorious for endemic gang violence. Police Scotland changed their whole approach in order to deal with it effectively, and this has become a model for other cities internationally.
The amount of relationship building British policing invests in makes solving even gang crimes more doable. Glasgow has a significant gang presence. I've lived and worked in gang-controlled neighborhoods in LA for the last 3 decades and the policing investment is nearly non-existent.
Comments
In the British case I wonder how much it’s the ubiquity of “CCTV.”
1) Fewer guns (easier to solve a murder case when they had to use their hands)
2) Fewer murders (virtuous circle effect)
3) Less racism.
In 2022 Oakland PD cleared 42 of 120 homicides
Hard for me to imagine 90% clearance w/o a lot of frame jobs
Oakland has a population of under 500,000, and you said they had 120 homicides in 2022.
Scotland has just over 5,000,000 people, but 613 homicides TOTAL since 2013.
And I picked a particularly bad year for OPD, on a good year they’re at more like 60% (though I do not trust all of the clearances!!!)
I got left minding the fire while visiting some reenacting friends. One of the older guys, as they headed off for a march round town, looked at me rather suspiciously
"Are you armed?"
"No!"
"Well, here's a hammer. If anyone bothers you, twat them and say you were in the loos..."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRfluaMKoOY
https://www.gov.scot/publications/homicide-scotland-2016-17-9781788512367/
Really speaks to the difference btwn a poverty suppression force and a crime-fighting force.
American police do themselves absolutely no favors here.