Why does crime tend to be lower in small towns?
The bigger the city, the greater the tendency for high crime rates. And the same pattern coincides, only in the opposite direction, for small towns. Even in more violent countries, such as Brazil.
So, what are the factors behind this phenomenon?
Many will point to the environment as the main factor. They will say that, in big cities, there are more people, and this factor alone increases the risk of human conflicts that result in violent acts. They will also say that social inequalities are greater and this leads some or many people, especially the poorest, to envy those who have more money than them, increasing the risk of engaging in criminal activities. And that these first two factors also fuel the urge for competition, especially among men, increasing the risk of them becoming involved in criminal activities or violent acts. They could also cite other, more specific environmental factors, such as greater access to psychotropic drugs, to claim that what is generally lacking in small cities and exceeds in large ones is sufficient to explain why there is this predominant trend of statistical differences in crime. And what's more, because they are not wrong, if, in fact, it is entirely feasible that these environmental factors have an influence on human behavior. However, these same people enter a state of absolute denial when they conclude that only the environment explains how we behave, because, even though there is a certain logic in not concluding in advance about biological or genetic factors, if they have not yet been fully identified and understood by science, it is a rationally pragmatic matter to deduce, confidently, that these factors are as influential or more influential and that discarding them, as these "circumstantialists" do, is, at the very least, imprudent. Although we do not yet have a complete picture of direct evidence on the genetic or biological influence on human behavior, it is already possible to perceive an accumulation of indirect evidence, through the observation of patterns, which confirm it, for example, by the perception of stability and predictability, in the medium and long term, of personality traits and intelligence. So, if it is true that densely populated urban environments present an increased risk of violent behavior, it is also true that individuals with different behavioral dispositions are impacted in different ways in the same environments or when they are exposed to the same stimuli and pressures, if not the majority of human beings in these spaces become violent or prone to committing crimes, not even in the outskirts of large cities. Therefore, it is not only the environment that influences human behavior, but also our own mental characteristics, which are more innate or intrinsic, and not just reflections of the influence of the environment on us. Again, it is a deduction that can be made, precisely because they are more stable and predictable in the medium and long term, because they are, on average, less influenced by social interventions or because they express themselves in a relatively independent way to pressures and stimuli (our behaviors are not absolutely logical, in the sense of reciprocal, to what happens around us or that interacts with us), there being, most likely, a coincidence or confluence between mental traits and environmental interaction factors, when there is a reciprocal response, and not that "factor x caused a behavioral expression to emerge, out of nowhere, in a certain individual". In conclusion, the most appropriate explanation for this social phenomenon, which is also behavioral, psychological, cognitive, genetic..., is that individuals with significantly higher levels of willingness to engage in violent, selfish or impulsive behavior feel more stimulated to practice them in densely populated urban environments than in less populated environments, also due to all the factors mentioned above, which serve as triggers or catalysts for tendencies and not as primary sources from which they originate. Because if only the environment had a preponderant role of influence, there would always be a great uniformity of behavior in response to it: a certain environment, pressure or stimulus, probably because of the variation in the disposition of mental characteristics (more intrinsic).
Final additional questions
Are these differences in criminality also a question of selective migration? Of mutation? And of statistical proportion??
1-
Do small towns attract or retain more individuals with a more docile temperament, while big cities tend to attract more impulsive, greedy and selfish types?
This is a very important question, because it makes sense that different environments/tend to attract or retain different types of human beings. Not that this factor fully explains this statistical difference in crime, but it can serve as an addendum that can partially explain this social phenomenon.
2-
Larger populations are more likely to have higher values of genetic diversity, because they are more susceptible to mutations that occur more naturally among them than in small populations, including mutations related to mental disorders, personality disorders...
3-
5% of psychopaths in a city of 15 thousand inhabitants (750) is not the same as 5% of psychopaths in a city of 2 million (100 thousand), right??
Therefore, having a large population increases the absolute proportion of individuals with mental disorders of a moral nature, such as psychopathy, and therefore increases the probability that they will engage in violent or criminal acts. This, without taking into account possible statistical differences in the incidence of psychopathy between small and large cities (the selective migration factor).